Co-habitants

When I picked up my shampoo bottle during my shower on Thursday, I noticed a black smudge behind it. Since I didn't have my glasses on, and couldn't distinctly see what the black smudge might be, I thought it was a bad patch of mold, and that I'd done a particularly shoddy job cleaning the bathtub earlier in the day.

After I got out of the shower and put my glasses on, though, I was able to conceptualize the black smudge as a rather large anole hanging out in the tub.

One of the consequences of living in a tropical environment and keeping the windows and doors open most of the time is that a wide variety of fauna has the opportunity to co-habitate with you. Even with screens on all of our windows, we get plenty of beetles and other insects, including the occasional grasshopper, in the house.

Anoles are less frequent, but we see one inside about once a week. Most of them are two or three inches long at the most, but this guy in the shower on Thursday was close to eight inches, nose-to-tail. He's definitely the largest anole we've seen in the house, and with his distinctive striping, one of the most colorful, too.