13th October

So - the 13th - unlucky for some, but I'm going to call it Lucky Lizard day. You see, I had just come inside from 2 gruelling hours chopping and stacking firewood, to have a cup of tea and a sit-down. As I moved towards the settee, mug of tea in hand, there was a scrabbling noise and a shower of tiny stones fell through the gap between the wall and the plywood floor upstairs, covering the arm of the settee below. Blasted mice I thought, and looked upward to see a little brown tail dangling down. This is just too much to take I shouted loudly as I banged on the ceiling with the end of the broom that I had just grabbed. With no apparent urgency the tail vanished slowly, rather like the smile on the Cheshire Cat. I sat down to drink my tea.

As I was finishing there was more scrabbling, and the tail descended again, a little further along the wall this time. With some presence of mind I grabbed my camera and took this picture:


As the camera flashed I thought that this tail didn't really look like it was the end of a mouse, and as the thought went through my mind there was some frantic scrabbling and the tail, accompanied by the body, (a lizard) fell through slap bang (or should that be splash bang) into the bowl of water that is my temporary sink!



Well of course I didn't leave it there to swim round and round like the animals caught in Alice's tears; I picked up bowl and lizard and emptied them into the garden, where the lizard scuttled off into the long grass.

So - lucky 13th for that lizard - if I had still been chopping wood I wouldn't have found him in time and he would probably have drowned