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LIZARD

                                              May 3, 1992
                                                
The Strange Tale of the Cowardly Lizard.        
(Or, Milking the Lizard.)                                         


Yesterday, I was leaving the house to go to a three year
old's birthday party.  But my car was missing.  Because I'd
left it parked at SLAC a couple of days ago.  Funny I hadn't
thought of it before.

So I had to walk to SLAC.  This was somewhat annoying, since
I'd already gone running for nearly an hour that afternoon,
and I could've just run over there to pick my car up.  
Also, I was now dressed in black since I hadn't expected to
be out in the sun.  

I will skip the various minor adventures of the trip --
meeting people at Tressdier, exploring the golf course and
stables, hanging out at the Sharon Heights shopping center,
and so on.                                                
                                                          
Once at SLAC, the guard didn't want to let me in, and I
kicked myself for not having done a cross-country
commando-style assault short-cut like I'd been thinking
about.  While hassling with the guard, I discovered the
curious fact that there was a lizard in my right hand
pocket.

I'd been standing there with my hands in my pockets, dimly
wondering "Huh, what's this rubbery thing doing here?"  It
seemed to be kind of sticky, and it didn't want to let me
take it out and throw it away...

"Hey! There's a lizard in my pocket!" I exclaimed.  The
guards ignored me.  Now what?  Taking my pants off seemed
like a bad idea, under the circumstances.  I considered
leaving the lizard there until I got my car back, but
unfortunately my car keys were under the lizard.  Well, I
guessed it *probably* wasn't poisonous.  And it hadn't
bitten me yet, but still... I asked the guards again for
some background info on the local lizards.  One of them told
me it was considered good luck when a lizard jumped on you.
The other was interested in whether or not the lizard was
alive or dead.  "I hope it's not dead!" he said.  I wasn't
sure about which way to hope, myself.

I tried lying down on the ground and coaxing the lizard out
of my pocket.  But the lizard insisted on burrowing deeper
into the nice safe, dark area it had found.  It's little
claws were admirably adapted to hanging onto cloth.

However, everything else fell out of my pocket, so at least
I had my car keys.

After going through some more guard nonsense, one of them
escorted me up to my car and left me in peace.  I considered
grabbing the lizard by the tail and giving it a yank, but with my
luck the tail would probably come off and I'd wind up with
an oozing lizard.  
                   
So, I put on about five layers of used clean room gloves (I
have lots of weird stuff in my car) and easily removed and
released the adventurous but cowardly lizard.

And somehow, the rest of the day was anti-climax: I quickly
bought a stuffed animal at Sears (an incredibly sad blue
mutant donkey), wrapped it (not a simple feat, at Sears) and
delivered it to the aforementioned three year old at the
absolute last moment of the party (she picked it up and said
"Ruff! Ruff! Ruff!"  And how could I disillusion her?).

I then rushed out to yet another party -- at a Japanese
woman's house, who had us remove our shoes, making me wonder
(a) if anyone would gag on my socks after the ten mile hike
I'd done, and (b) what other lovely surprises I'd find in my
shoes later that evening.                                   

(Incidentally, to my knowledge, I don't have any lizards
crawling around in my bed room.  My bet is it was the
Sharon Heights Shopping Center, which is somehow appropriate
considering it's froofy up-scale oh-so-nice pretensions...)
                                                       
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