Wagon Lizard
 

I know most people call these guys "Fence Lizards", but I can't ever recall actually ever finding one on a fence. This one seems to prefer the wagon we have sitting underneath the car port, and her favored position is laying in the corner looking out over the driveway with her front arm draped over the edge. She will also often be found laying on one of the tires towards evening. I was also lucky enough to catch her via the camera evidently climbing up onto the wagon through the screen mesh.

Connie and I walk by her many times during the day and talk to her, and she seems to have become quite used to our presence.

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MAN.........that is one cute lizard! Where would I be likely to spot one of those where I live in Dunedin? Any "favorite" haunts that they seem to frequent?
Andy

Well, hard to say. This page has a range map -> https://srelherp.uga.edu/lizards/sceund.htm

But that being said, just because the range covers a broad area doesn't mean you will find them over every square foot of that range. But they seem to like high dry areas with lots of pine woods and oaks. Honestly, they were much more common in areas I knew about in southern Maryland than they are here.

And as you can probably tell, unless you are looking hard for one, it could be sitting on the bark of a pine tree, and you might never notice it. They tend to freeze up when something suspicious is around, counting on their coloration, pattern, and generally rough bark like appearance to keep them unnoticed. But when they know the jig is up and they are spotted, they will act a lot like squirrels by trying to keep the tree between you and them as much as possible.

These are actually pretty personable lizards. Several years ago during a dry spell, Connie was out with a cup of water to water a plant she had placed at the bottom of a large pine tree. When she bent down to pour water on the plant, she was astonished to see a fence lizard run down the tree, stick it's head in the cup and take some long drinks from the water. She ran to find me, and when I walked over with her, the lizard duplicated the action again for me to witness.

Sometimes they do get too used to us, I think. To the extent that we get worried that we might accidentally step on them. We have a good half a dozen hanging around the garage, and we normally have to chase one of two off of the step going into the garage door. And when pulling a vehicle in or out of the garage, one of us has to do a sweep to make sure we won't be running over one of the little critters.

A few weeks ago Connie was pulling the jeep out of the garage and I noticed a little fence lizard sitting right in the path. I ran towards it thinking it would run off, but it just hunkered down. I thought Connie saw me as I waved my arm and yelled out to her. So I stooped down to try to chase off the lizard from harm's way, but instead had to actually get him to climb on my hand. Meanwhile, Connie is backing up and I had to leap up and smack the back of the Jeep to get her to stop before I and the lizard became roadkill.

This time of year we are normally crawling with baby lizards around here. It's a problem, because I don't dare take out the hedge trimmer to keep the woods at bay, for fear of chopping up lizards in the process.

I do think that some of them keep their eye on me, though....


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