The Story of the Sneaky Lizard, Part 2

Fast forward more than a week.  To this past Sunday.

I ran out of Diet Dr. Pepper on Sunday morning.  This is a huge tragedy for me.  Especially because I had spent four hours working on algebra homework and did not feel like going to the corner store to get more.  But too bad for me.  If I wanted my caffeine high, I had to go.

The corner store is less than a mile from my house.  If I were a less lazy person, I would walk there.  Instead, I'm a more lazy person, so I drive there.

So, off I go.  I go inside, get what I'm there for (and more besides, because it's the corner store, man, and they have Star Crunch!), and I come back to my car.

When I get in, I see something that's vaguely the same color as my car on my hood.  I squint to see it better, when suddenly it turns and fixes me with an evil, malevolent eye.

It's that sneaky fucking lizard.

It is a damn good thing that I didn't see it before I got in the car, because I would still be standing on the sidewalk in front of the corner store, doing my best impression of Jay and/or Silent Bob.  Probably Silent Bob because I'm fat like that, and also I'm pretty sure that seeing that lizard on the hood of my car and trying to make itself blend in with fire-engine-red paint would have short-circuited my brain, making speech impossible for the rest of my life.

I decide to drive on.  In the hopes that I could get up to a good speed and the lizard would fly off my car entirely, possibly to be crushed under the wheels of whoever might be behind me.

This does not work.  Instead, the lizard gets pissed off and starts leaping at my face.  Thank God there was a windshield in between me and him because if he had succeeded in leaping on my face, I would have driven my car through the nearest house and the tragedy would have been horrific and in the newspaper.

Rationally, I know that there's a windshield between myself and this trespassing little bastard, but I'm not thinking rationally.  So I start screaming.  I'm driving down the road and I'm screaming at the top of my lungs.  People who live on my street and know who I am are witnessing me driving down the street, screaming at something they probably can't see, considering that he's still trying to blend in with my paint.  Sneaky motherfucker.

I pull into the driveway and decide that obviously I can't just get out - he's going to leap on me!  And his toenails will scrabble on my skin!  And then I can never go inside ever, because I'll have a lizard on me!  So I did what any forward-thinking woman would do.  I called my husband.

And he did not answer.

By this time, my next-door neighbor stopped raking his yard and started watching me because he realized that I had been in the driveway for probably a minute at that point, with absolutely no intention of getting out of my car.

The lizard is still there.  Eyeballing me.  Probably trying to figure out how to get into the car itself so that it could put its toenails on me.

I realize suddenly that I'm still screaming obscenities at the hood of my car.  More specifically, at the lizard, but I'm pretty sure my neighbor can't see him, now that I think about it.

I start honking the horn so that my husband will come out.  He comes out pretty quickly, all things considered, but my two kids come out with him, so that they can witness the abject hysteria that is their mother.

My husband comes out and says:  "Oh, hey!  It's that lizard!"

It's that lizard?  You *knew* about this?

"Oh yeah, he rode on the hood of the car to Subway and back when the kids and I went to get lunch."

He sidles over to my side of the car, making the international signal for rolling down the window.

"NO!" I scream.  "IF I ROLL DOWN THE WINDOW, HE'LL PUT HIS TOENAILS ON ME!"

Understandably, this befuddles Spike.

"GET HIM OFF MY CAR!"

Spike sort of waves a hand at the lizard, and the lizard obligingly hops down and finds refuge in the wheel of Spike's car.  Which happens to be right next to where I have to walk if I get out of the car.

I decide right then that I'm going to become a car hobo.  I've slept in my car before.  It's not that bad.  I am never getting out again until somebody can show me the lifeless body of the reptile.

I scream this through my rolled-up window.  My children begin to cry.  I have to get out of the car.  I grab the bag from the corner store and sprint to the front door.  I try to explain to my husband that that is the self-same lizard that menaced me a week earlier.

He says: "The exact one?  Nah.  Probably it's a different one."

There are two of them?

You know, I like my house.  Maybe I'll stay in here.  Forever.  With all the doors and windows shut.  And maybe locked in case lizards can learn how to open windows.