Lizards, Lizards, and more Lizards

While searching for something under the seat of my car this morning, I was reminded of this story.

About a year and a half ago, in August, I was leaving work early to rush off to the first day of my Masters/Reading Specialist program. Knowing it was the first day of school and parking would be a nightmare, I was in a real hurry. On my way, I stopped at Claire's to pick up my mail that had been piling up there since I had moved out a month earlier. She had left the mail in a bag on her front porch. I pulled into her driveway, left the motor running, and hopped out to grab the bag. I threw the bag on my front seat, and continued on my merry way. Suddenly I decided it would be a good idea to read my mail on my way to school, so I reached over, grabbed the bag, and dumped it in my lap. A lizard also came from the bag, crawled acroos my chest, over my arm, and onto the center console. I yelped, and to this day I have no idea how I avoided an accident as I pulled into the driveway of McDonald's and pulled the car over. I was out before I even had the car in park. Unfortunately the little guy was too quick for me, and he hid down by the gas and brake pedals. Mind you, I am late, it is HOT, and I am stressed about getting to class. So I suck it up and drive downtown knowing that the damn thing could crawl on my feet at any moment.

I make it school and sit through six hours of class knowing that my problem has not been solved and the hideous little bugger is still in my car. Seeing as it was 10 o'clock when we left class, I had to give a girl a ride to her car. As she was getting out, she calmly looked at me and said, "It's under your seat, and it's dead." Again, I was out of the car before I had it in park. I had only met this girl twice, and she removed the dead lizard (it was 90 degrees outside - died from the heat) from my car for me. Even knowing that the thing was gone, all the way home I was still twitching and imagining it crawling on me.

For a while I had nightmares. I did research online about lizards to see how long their eggs take to hatch and imagined the worst. Every time I pulled down my visor I expected a lizard to pop out. I swore I was going to sell my car. Just when I had gotten over it, we were going to dinner with friends. As I got into my passenger side door, a damn lizard bolted across the floor. But this time it was ok. My ex-boyfriend stabbed it with a pencil, and it lay in our driveway for a few days, getting hardened by the sun. Eventually a cat dragged it away.

Hadn't really thought about that until today, when I suddenly wondered if there could possibly be a lizard under my seat.