Lizard Chapter 15: Caregiving

In the morning she went to him gently to take him and place him in the towel to take him to the path for burial, but he was still alive! So instead she took him outside when the morning sun hit the front porch and he came back to life. He puffed up, stood up, even took an eyedropper of water from her. His injured eye was swollen; the other looked almost shut. She loved and cared for him.

As the day passed he got very quiet and still again. Once again she prepared for his demise. She slept on the couch nearby and in the morning he was in the same position as he was the night before. It was Sunday. She went to lift him off the towel and, once again, very slowly, his head moved from side to side at the disturbance. He was very slow to rouse and this gave her a chance to look closely at his injured eye. She cleaned the blood off of it with sprays of water--he continued to sleep. She then saw something small and thin and straight coming out of his eye and it seemed to be an insect stinger or a cactus needle. She got her tweezers and very very delicately she grabbed the needle and pulled. He coiled around and writhed in pain for about 10 seconds and then he was totally still again. She was afraid she may have killed him.

Mr. Lizard needed all the help he could get.

She started studying up on lizards and found out he was probably a Clark's Spiny Lizard.