Honoring the Lizard of Oz

This is from the first time I met the beardies. They belonged to the super sweet family I was working for at the time, but they are ours now. Their names are Crikers and Beaut, in honor of the late Steve Erwin, I believe. They look fearsome for the first thirty seconds or so, and then they just look sort of earnestly vacant. What surprised me most was their fragility, and warmth. Normally when I think of a lizard, say, an iguana, I think of something cold and slimy-hard like a crab, or leathery like that little rubbery plastic alligator we had for years until its bottom jaw eventually got ripped off by a couple of vigorously well-meaning tykes. But these little guys, just beneath their fearsomely spiky skins (which looked almost like exoskeletons, but were thinner than mine), were as soft and delicate-boned as rabbits. One hung down the front of my shirt like a huge brooch, curling his sharp little claws into my mercifully thick sweater. The other draped himself across my shoulder. Mom, who was with me, held one in the crook of her arm like a baby and rocked it for awhile. She discovered that when she turned, the lizard would keep his head in the same place and let his little body pivot around it like a door-hinge. The one I was holding did that too. One of the Thomson boys said his grandmother’s chickens do the same thing. He said he could lift any of them up, down, side to side, and it would stretch its little neck as far as it could to keep its head at the same point on the x, y, and z planes as it had started. With that kind of 3D precision, I think we should start hiring lizards and chickens to be fighter pilots. Who knows? World peace could be just around the corner.