The Stuff Nightmares Are Made Of...

Last night, I woke up around 3 am to go to the bathroom.

I half remember groggily coming back to my futon and looking forward to falling back to sleep, when I felt my foot kick over the nearly full glass of water that I'd left on the floor.

I had one of those "oh shit!" reactions because there was a large (and full) moving box next to the spilled water that started getting wet. I immediately pushed the box about a foot away, over a small ledge that it had been half resting on into my kitchen. I grabbed a nearby dish towel and bent over in the dark to sop up the water so it wouldn't spread any further.

In the very dim light of the early morning, I noticed a strange, long, little rectangular shape laying near the water where the box had been. For a second I thought it was a strip of cardboard that had come loose, and I started to move to pick it up but upon getting closer and squinting (I wasn't wearing my glasses), I noticed that it looked a little bit like a dead animal. Or at least I was pretty sure that I'd seen legs.

At that point, I was wide awake.

I ran to turn on the light and, half-shrieking, I discovered that the little rectangle was indeed a deceased critter... a baby lizard to be exact. And he was rather shriveled and dry looking, like he'd been there for a while.

I apologize now for not taking a photo of the event, but I wasn't really thinking about my blog right then.

Instead, as has always been my fear ever since my dogs killed a groundhog when I was a young teenager and my parents made me bury it (and I felt its dead weight on the end of the shovel, which completely skeeved me out), I am totally repulsed by the disposing of dead animals.

Therefore, I grabbed about six paper towels and folded them up in a thick bunch, grabbed the lizard (which honestly did look almost like jerky because he was so dried out) and then sprinted to my kitchen garbage can, where I tossed him into it with a spastic fling of the wrist. (Frankly, I would have liked to pitch him in the dumpster outside, but common sense... and a lazy streak... dictated that I should not go into an alley at that time of night.)

Somehow I actually did get back to sleep but not without pondering for a bit about how the lizard got there and died in the first place. I concluded that he must have crawled under the tipped up box while seeking a cave-like atmosphere and then got trapped and couldn't get back out (God forbid I pinned him under there accidentally and squashed him... that is so gross).

And of course, now I am wondering how many more lizards are running around, unseen by me, in my apartment, especially at night.

Then again, I could have been these people and found a dead lizard in my Slushie...

Oh hell! I hope the lizard didn't pour out of my water cup! I hadn't thought about that.

The bottom line is this... after my run-in with the massive roach/beetle character in my bathroom two weeks ago and now the discovery of a dead lizard right next to my bed, I am pretty convinced that Tucson during the summer time is downright scary.

Never mind the scorching weather. It's the wildlife that is driving me out of here. (No pun intended).