Step off the front porch and lizards scamper. Leaves rustle as they flee. Some disappear into cracks in the steps. There are small ones and big ones with fat bodies, brown with pointed heads, some with a stripe running down their length.

Look out the glass double doors in the kitchen and you may see one lizard in particular. A small lizard, young I presume, likes to lounge or lay in wait on the screen doors just outside the glass. He strikes poses of elegance, holds them, motionless. One day, his body is hidden by the horizontal wooden strip partway down the screen. Just his tendril of a long tail is visible. It makes a not quite closed P, the …