Jurassic Basement

We have company coming, so I decided to take my shower curtains down to the laundry for a washing. I use alot of bleach on the liners and am always afraid that it will get all over me while I try to get them out. When I heard the washing machine stop, I went down and started taking off my clothes. Nice visual, huh? Anyway, I was down to my bra and had the belt of my jeans unbuckled, when I saw something walk past the dryer. It was, are you ready for this, a LIZARD! WTH? It looked alot like this.

See how he is mocking me, daring me to come closer so he can eat me? Or, maybe he is saying, "Na, na, na, na na, I'm in your basement! You can't touch me!" Yeah, laugh it up big guy, laugh it up. So, my reaction to finding this little bit of the herpetarium in my basement is to scream like I am being cut with a samurai sword. The neighbor probably heard. All of them.

I call my husband to have him come home to remove the beast from the basement. He cannot understand me through all of the screaming. At the exact same time that I am screaming at him, a friend calls on my cellphone. She never calls, so while I was concerned, I was a bit more concerned for what was stalking me in the basement. I scream at her too, telling her their is a large reptile in my basement. She, not surprisingly, couldn't understand me and hangs up, texting me to find out what was them matter. I text her back and she just laughs, no offer to come over with a lizard trap. Hubby says he has to go to a meeting and I am left to fight off the beast in the basement. I call my parents. My mom puts my dad on the phone and I tell him to come over immediately to put this thing out of my misery. He says let it be, it eats the bugs. I scream that I don't care and get over here. He does.

We go into the basement. I point out the location of the offender and he grabs a flashlight and step stool. We have weapons but he chooses to go at it unarmed. He pokes and prods things, nothing happens. By now, the thing is probably wandering around the house. The useless cat doesn't even seem interested in what I am telling her. My dad reassures me that at least it isn't a snake. How freakin' reassuring is that? He then goes on to say, that it has probably been in the basement for quite some time, grown up there, so to speak. Freakin' great. I tell my dad to get out because I don't want anymore of his opinions.

I post on my mommy boards. I explain the entire story and my responses are interesting. Most say that I am lucky it isn't a huge spider. While this is true, I could kill a spider and that would be it. Now, I basically have a pet in my basement, and an unwanted one at that. Most laugh at my underwear clad self screaming at the top of my lungs about something I may never see again. Whatever, I am never going into the basement unarmed again.

Larry the Lizard, as I call him now, wasn't really that big. I am figuring about 9-10 inches. That is pretty long though, I think, especially for someone that doesn't like things living in her house that don't make any kind of contribution, other than scaring the crap out of me.

This is probably a more accurate representation of the visitor.


You know, the smiling, happy go lucky lizard that just wants to hang out and be friends. Larry was brown, but you get the idea.

I have yet to see Larry the Lizard again, and I am totally fine with that. I carry a broom and make alot of noise to scare him away. I am not feeding him or setting out water for him, I want him go away, far away. I am still faced with the fear of him crawling into my clean laundry and making his move upstairs. I may need therapy.