This afternoon around 3:00 pm, I gave my two middle school girls a choice: you may either go outside and do something active (no sitting in the tree or on the garden bench) or you can wash and dry and put away the dishes that are sitting piled in precarious arrangements all along the kitchen counters. They chose to go outside.

I tried to emphasize the need for activity and I recited for them a list of possible choices: pogo stick, hula hoops, playground balls, jump rope. They listened absently, and as they exited the house I heard them discussing their plans to practice some 3-legged races in preparation for a party in the park on Saturday.

They were outside playing for only a few minutes when I heard shrieks and screams coming from the backyard. These didn’t seem to be of the ultra-urgent 911 variety, and I try not to respond to every shriek or scream, so I continued my work in the kitchen (no, I wasn’t doing the dishes).

I had barely made my decision “not” to respond when MG burst through the kitchen door yelling, “Mom, Mom!” Oh, no…I braced myself for a broken arm or…?

“Mom,” she said. “There’s a great big lizard caught in the mouse trap! Come and see!”

“He’s stuck,” she continued. “Can we get him off?”

I walked out with her to the shed where my husband had set out several sticky adhesive traps to catch mice. There, on the largest sticky trap was a good-sized alligator lizard. He was stuck from just below his neck all the way down his body to the tip of his tail. He was still quite alive, but stuck. Upon closer observation, I saw that the normally smooth surface of the adhesive on the trap, particularly in the area directly surrounding the lizard’s body, had been roughed up. It showed the unsuccessful struggle of the lizard to extricate himself from the strong adhesive.

“Is he alive?”
“Can we get him off?”
“Should we feed him?”
“What does he eat?”
My daughters were excited and they wanted answers.

I stood there looking at that poor lizard. I told my daughters what I knew: “He is alive; he’s an alligator lizard; he eats insects and he will bite.”

“Will he eat ants?”
“I think ants are too little,” I said.
“Will he eat a worm?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know.”
“Can we feed him?”
“You can try. Just make sure you have gloves on,” I warned. “Because he will bite.”

After a little more discussion, we decided that we probably could not get him unstuck. We also decided that it wouldn’t hurt to try to feed him. So PX grabbed a shovel and began to dig for worms and I returned to the house wondering what I was supposed to do next.

The lizard wasn’t dead. He was very much alive. I could leave him in the trap until my husband arrived home; I could let him deal with it. I didn’t want the girls to torment the creature while trying to nurse it. But what could I do? It was stuck fast. The lizard would come apart if I tried to pry it off the sticky trap.

Then I thought, “These sticky traps are quite common. I wonder if this had happened to anyone else.” I went to my computer, typed in “alligator lizard stuck” and was directed to several sites in answer to my query. What I found out is that I needed some vegetable oil (cooking oil) to apply to the lizard; this would enable him to become “unstuck” from the adhesive pad. I also needed some sort of powder (I used corn starch) to render the other exposed areas of the sticky pad “not sticky”. So, armed with a can of cornstarch, a measuring spoon, a small cup of oil and my gardening gloves, I went out to rescue the lizard.

First we I brought him, trap and all, out of the shed and into the open sunlight of the driveway. And he did try to bite me, but he was a bit hindered by his immobilized condition. After I had gotten him outside, I began the extrication process. First I dribbled the oil all around his body and tail. Then I spooned the corn starch over the non-oiled areas of the adhesive trap. After that, I turned my attention to the lizard and began poking gently at him all along his body and tail. This was to help the oil reach the points of contact between his skin and the sticky trap. He was not amused, and he continued to open wide his mouth and threathen my gloved hand as I worked around him.

It didn’t take very long for the oil to do its work; the adhesive began to lose its grip on the lizard. When that happened, the lizard became much more mobile and he continued trying to bite me as he thrashed about. Soon his body was free; only his tail remained adhered. Then (as I tried to work the oil around his tail)…his tail broke and he was free.

He quickly scrambled under our basketball backstop, while his tail continued to wag and thrash about on the adhesive pad. This “dismemberment” was an utterly new sight for my girls and they pronounced the sight as the grossest thing they had every seen and assured me they would be meeting the thrashing tail in their dreams tonight. After a few facinating minutes of watching the tail, I deposited it into the trash can and the excitement came to an end.

Both I and my daughters went back in the house and things returned to normal. But my girls were still thinking about it. A few minutes later one of my daughters asked me, “Mom, if one of our arms or legs were cut off, would it flop around like that?” Yikes! That’s truly a scary thought. I think I’ll bring this adventure to an end.