The One that Got Away

A couple of days ago, I was chilling, (or in this case boiling) in our kitchen when my dad called me to come outside in a voice that he uses when something is very important. So I went outside with my animal box, a clear plastic storage tub with holes drilled in the white lid. Once outside, my dad pointed to a hole in the cinder block wall that perimeters the mission. Inside the hole was a lizard, a rather large iguana. I thought it was a slow moving gentle skink-like lizard, not a fast moving whip-tailed iguana! So I said, "I think this kind is really slow, Daddy." Boy was I wrong! We took the lid off the box. My intention was to catch the thing. We put the box over the hole and Daddy held it there while I went over to the other side of the wall and pounded on it. The lizard didn't like that and instead of going out of the hole and into the box, it simply went deeper into the hole. Only the tip of its tail was showing.
Daddy was ready to call it a night for it was after supper. But I didn't want to lose this iguana so I said,"Wait, let's pour water down the hole." So I got a cup of water and Daddy did the pouring while he held the box near the hole. The first cup didn't work, but the second was only half gone when... out shot the lizard so fast you could hardly see it, right into the box! Except that Daddy was holding the box out from the wall so he could pour the water in. He tried to push it up against the wall, but the lizard had started to run out. Daddy was afraid he would either squish it or it would run up his arm, so he dropped the box! Up the wall the iguana ran. The lizard paused one third of the way up. I picked the box off the ground and lunged toward it. Too late! For the lizard ran up and over the wall. I ran around to the other side just in time to see it sprinting on its hind legs into a grove of banana trees. Because the iguana had to much of a head start, I did not follow it into the darkness. And that was the one that got away.

Gecko

Place: Trujillo, Honduras, (on the path to the kitchen)
Time: 11:00am
Name: Gecko
Type of Creature: Lizard
Description: A smooth animal, blue-gray color before shedding and tan after, scaly tail.
Comments:I found this gecko and I thought something was wrong with it because it did not run away from me, but really it was just shedding its skin. This made it look like its limbs were coming off! In trying to get a photo of it in my hand, it got scared and its tail broke off. It does that for defense. God created it with a weak spot in the tail which allows it to come off easily. When attacked, the tail breaks off and lays there wiggling like crazy. The predator is distracted by the tail and the gecko gets away. The gecko then grows a new tail. (Sometimes the tail doesn't come off all the way. It still grows a new one and then it has two tails!)