May 22, 2005
WILD KINGDOM
Well, Marlin Perkins is dead and dust, that suave fucker, but he would have enjoyed my back yard. I've spoken before of the plethora of lizards around here, but that is too innocuous a term. I am plagued by these vermin. It is as if a mighty god smote me with them, for some imagined slight at the sacrificial altar of luck-fucked ovines. They are everywhere.
These are not the chameleons, either. These little knotheads stay brown, and have ridges down their backs like miniature dragons. Horrid little bastards. I wouldn't care, really, but my cat has forced the issue.
She used to toy with them, and play with them, and pop off their tails. Of the 800 or so lizards I can espy on any given day I would estimate 80% have no tails. They are the lucky ones. Because she has apparently developed a taste for the little fiends, and has been devouring them like a crack whore on an expense account.
Hates the heads, though, just like any good female. She will only eat the body, and leaves the disembodied heads lying around. She often brings them inside for consumption, and so today I counted, between the den and the lanai, 14 lizard heads. Fuckamighty, that's a lot of lizard heads. She also yaks the bodies, of course, so there's THAT to deal with.
It was carnage I surveyed today, as if the Golden Horde had cut a swath through my homestead, with a hard on for tiny reptiles.
Jurassic Park. Velocikingdom. There has to be a market for these heads. I need to turn a dime. Prolly some obscure religious sect of Asians with a taste for the things. Is a dollar a piece too much, do you think? I have no market data here.
That's what I'm talking 'bout. Beautiful post!
Soooo...How long does it your cat to slay and devour 14 lizards? ...just wondering how long they've been accumulating. ;)
Posted by: Key at May 22, 2005 10:29 PMA weekend of gruff work. None of it dessicated, yet.
Posted by: Velociman at May 22, 2005 10:46 PMWith an application of ants, the skeletal remains can be quite beautiful.
And commercial.
PS...snuff the cat. Such a habit is incurable.
Once you've gone lizard, you never go back.
Posted by: Bane at May 23, 2005 2:39 AMGot to agree with Bane. Lizards ear ants and cats have a problem with hairballs. Rather have lizards and no ants than no lizards and lots of ants. And regrutated lizards and hairballs are quite messy.
Posted by: GUYK at May 23, 2005 9:08 AMI like lizards more than I like cats. I also have a few of those large, dinosaur-looking skinks around the Crackerbox--- the ones that come running out of the bushes sounding like a herd of buffalo every now and then. I have one that must be 18" long and he's day-glow ORANGE.
I leave the lizards alone. They eat the bugs that like to bite me.
Posted by: Acidman at May 23, 2005 12:05 PM
I love to lie around in the yard and watch the critters. I have hundreds of them near my front door, in the azaleas, and they seem to come in all shapes and sizes. I, too, have those that look like miniature dinosaurs.
I'm cutting the azaleas, to the ground, because they're the wrong size for the location, but I'm gonna miss those little lizards.
Posted by: jmflynny at May 23, 2005 1:44 PMI can't recall seeing any lizards here in Oregon. Snakes, yes, but they stay on the down low. We have tons of crows, and they are voracious. I have seen them clear a wetland meadow of it's frogs in a single day. One night, the frogs are screaming, the next, nothing.
If lizards really eat ants, I need to import some. We are beset.
Posted by: Bane at May 23, 2005 6:39 PMSeeing as how I grew up with five cats at any one time, and only ONE had such a great taste for lizards, I can say thusly; lizards make your cat skinny. Has the feline in question dropped some pounds?
Place the lizard heads on toothpicks, and place them where the lizard populace at large resides. Maybe they'll get the message. Tie a bit of cat fur on the picks for effect.
Posted by: Cythen at May 23, 2005 8:46 PMOne day my golden retriever puppy liberated a dead dove that the neighbor's cat killed in our yard (we have a bird feeder). He so kindly brought it in through the dog door and disected it in our living room. I came home to blood and feathers from ones side of the house to the other. In the middle of it was a half eaten carcass, apparently dogs don't care about what they eat like cats. He ate the head.
Posted by: Maeve at May 24, 2005 12:05 PMCythen is quite correct. When I lived in Phoenix our alpha cat developed quite a taste for lizards. He started losing weight and looking very skanky. I was told that said lizards interfered with cat digestion. We moved and the cat got fat again! My $0.02!
Posted by: Ed at May 24, 2005 2:01 PMGenerally, the only lizards I see in Jersey wear pinky rings and sing bad Sinatra at Ramada Inns. The real ones remind me of ... well ... alligators. Disgusting beasts - all of them.
Posted by: Jim - PRS at May 28, 2005 7:58 PM