I'm a county girl at heart. I grew up in an extremely rural area, surrounded by woods and cow pastures.
I once rented a house in the middle of the woods and the owners asked me point blank if I could handle being up on a hill with deer and raccoons as my closest neighbors, a previous tenant had freaked out when raccoons tipped the garbage and deer would peek in the windows. I assured then I was an old hand at all that. Which, was born out when a raccoon came into the house through the cat door. Luckily it was a room shut off from the house and I was able to shoo it out with a broom.
However, I just can't get used to the lizards around here.
I have seen both the Eastern Fence Lizard and the tiny Little Brown Skink (which was really cute once I got over the initial shock of finding it under the wading pool). Mostly we have five lined skinks. They are down right pretty in their juvenile form with their electric blue tails. But, and there is always a but, they grow up and get rather large. Well maybe not huge, but they are a heck of a lot bigger than any other non-mammal I've encountered in the wild short of a snake.
The one pictured here is at a fairly good size and that's with most of its tail missing. These babies decidedly do not creep quietly about. They plunge into the underbrush with a large rattle of leaves and scare me half to death. every. single. time. Of course it doesn't help when a gamy dog decides it must follow it.
At least the deer are quiet.
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