Leaping Lizards

Those of you who know the Gay Uncle personally know that while he loves children, he has a much lower tolerance for other forms of cute and cuddly life, namely: animals. Much of this is due to allergies (cats, dogs, rodents) but some of it is historically based: he never had a pet as a child and thus failed to learn the appeal. (He also hates cleaning up the poo of other living creatures.) Anyway, he tells you this so you’ll understand why he’s chosen to include as his second post-vacation post this week, another Caribbean creature feature. (This, and the fact that he never tires of the charismatic buffoonery of his brother-in-law, Marty.) This story involves a lizard. Like donkeys and mongeese, lizards patrol the lush terrain of the island of St. John as if they own the place, sunning themselves in drainage ditches, scampering underfoot, and sometimes stopping traffic by drawing a cluster of camera-wielding tourists. Don’t get the wrong impression here. When G.U. says lizard, he’s not talking about cute little geckos or green anoles. He’s referring to these terrifying creatures which are about three feet long, covered in scales and spikes, and clearly just a teensy evolutionary micro-blip away from the T. Rex. Given this information, Gunc will tell his tale in the form of a question: How would you behave if you were a 200 pound, 43 year-old man, managing the care of three young girls, and one of these hissing monsters approached your beach chairs, its beady eyes trained on your lunch? You have five choices.

a) Stomp the ground, wave your arms, and shout “Shoo evil raptor! You will not devour my daughters and niece this afternoon!”

b) Gather said children in your arms and retreat into the relative safety of the water until such point as the danger passes on to another, more vulnerable, beach-going family.

c) Call “resort” security

d) Stab the reptile through the heart with a sharpened stick, build a fire, and make dinner for the entire island.

e) Abandon the children where they sit, lure the animal towards the waterline by holding a small piece of your sandwich perilously close to its razor-like teeth, drop the bread on the wet sand as bait, and begin pelting the predator with pebbles and chunks of coral. When confronted by an environmentally conscious 11 year-old Australian boy about your concerted efforts to harm a protected species of lizard, respond with the caveat that you were simply “Trying to train this iguana to fear humans!”

If you selected e) you may have something in common with Gunc’s B-I-L, Marty, (as well as lion tamers, Homer Simpson, and the Defense Department analysts responsible for planning the post-invasion management of the city of Baghdad): a very specific–and little understood–form of “intelligence”. If this is the case (or if you know someone like this) please help science to understand their synaptical mysteries, by sharing your story in COMMENTS below.