Last night I found a green anole lizard in the bottom of my kitchen sink. Realizing that its chances for capturing bugs for prey in my house would be slim, I decided to capture it and release it outdoors. This is not an uncommon occurrence for me so I eased around and snatched it up with my right hand.
I generally try to make these captures as gentle as possible so as to not injure the lizards. However, when I covered the critter with my hand, the anole promptly bit my finger and latched onto me. The sensation was about the same as what one would feel if one put a binder clip on one’s finger, except this binder clip had a set of miniature teeth.
I laughed at the lizard’s spunk and took it outside where I tried to gently position it on the leaves of a nearby shrub.
The anole would have none of this however, and re-tightened its grip and hung on for all it was worth. As I held my hand up and open so the anole could drop off, it just chomped down and dangled with its feet and tail splayed. I didn’t want to fling the little fellow off or try to open its jaws as I thought that I might hurt it, so stood there for two to three minutes while the lizard’s grip loosened and was re-tightened four or five times.
Finally the anole either got jaw cramps, decided that I was too big to swallow, decided that I had been taught a lesson, or decided that it should go while the going was good. In any case, the anole abruptly let go its grip, dropped to the ground, and disappeared without saying thank you or goodbye.
I had a good laugh at the affair, especially when I remembered the old adage about snapping turtles that I learned as a kid. I was cautioned that if one was bitten by a snapping turtle, the turtle would not let go until it thundered. I believed that homespun wisdom enough such that I never put myself and a snapping turtle in a position whereby we could test the hypothesis.
Perhaps this particular green anole had some snapping turtle genes in its hereditary background somewhere.
Source or sink?
In the ecological community, one way to think of sources is as habitats or sites which provide adequate resources and conditions such that selected organisms can prosper, reproduce, and add to the population.
On the other hand, sinks can be thought of as areas that attract organisms away from real source areas, but that do not provide adequate resources or proper conditions for the short-term and long-term benefit of a given population.
As a wildlife biologist and as a wetland scientist, I have long held a dim view of poor land management practices that can and do create sink conditions. In my mind, man-created mud holes and logging ruts may be the poster children of that which is undesirable (e.g., by acting as sinks for things such as tadpoles and fairy shrimp).
Dragonfly egg cluster on auto hood just to the left of the cap.
Close-up view of apparent dragonfly egg mass on auto hood.
I was caught off guard, however, when a dragonfly apparently laid some egg clusters on my automobile hood while I was stopped at a traffic light. Presumably the silver-colored, somewhat shiny hood fooled the dragonfly into thinking that it had found a pool of water in the middle of town.
Now I don’t know whether to wash my car more or less frequently. Maybe I should ride a bicycle.