Alligator Lizards in the Air

    Saturday afternoon I helped my son, James, stack half a cord of wood.  James lives on top of Livingston Mountain, just north and east of Vancouver, Washington at an elevation of about 1500 feet.  At my advanced age, I was pleased to be able to engage in some genuine physical work, but after an hour I had shed my outer garments and I was looking for any reason to take a break.  So I was both fascinated and relieved when James announced that there was a lizard harboring under the last of the wood.  

Southern Alligator Lizard, Vacaville, Ca. 

    Although it had been foggy when we walked down the hill, through the pasture to the barn, it was now bright and sunny, albeit still below 50 degrees.  There in the grass, looking up at us, was a surprisingly stout lizard with a formidable head.  The shape of his head, with its elongated snout, lead me to believe this was an alligator lizard.

     Pretty much all I knew about alligator lizards was that they flew through the air in that pleasant ballad from the early 70s, Ventura Highway.  One has to assume that the song writer, Dewey Bunnell, had some personal experience with alligator lizards, although we are told that he was evoking clouds in the sky as his father changed a flat tire near Vandenberg Air Force base on the Southern California coast.  (Dewey grew up in an Air Force family.)

     Suffice it to say, its a long way from Ventura to Vancouver. I think Paul Simon might have included that fact in one of his collaborations with Art Garfunkel.  For me, at least that period is a bit fuzzy, so I might have got it wrong.  Was it Berkley to Carmel, Kalmazoo to Saginaw? Anyway, with this limited bit of knowledge, ie. Ventura Highway is where you see alligatior lizards, I had never presumed that they would exist in Washington State. As it turns out there are several species of alligator lizards.  B

Northern Alligator Lizard 

oth northern and southern alligator lizards may exist in the vicinity of both Ventura and Southwest Washington, although for the southern they just make it across the Columbia River.  Northern Alligator Lizards extend all the way up into Central British Columbia. Probably what we saw was the northren..

   The lizard just sat there.  Perhaps he was too cold to slither off, or possibly he was relying on the cryptic coloration of his hounds tooth coat, figuring if he didn't move we wouldn't see him.  There is a third possibility, that being that if we attempted to molest him he would inflict a painful bite.  Take that, you hippies!   There are several pictures on the internet of alligator lizards biting a human finger. 

   Neither James nor I had brought a cell phone to the wood stacking, so I'm including a couple pictures from the internet so you can get an idea of what I saw, a stout lizard of about eight inches with a formidable set of jaws.   

   Those of us in the north, still in the grips of a cold spring, can look at the clouds and dream of a warm Southern California highway. 

jeff