Lizard's tail/tale

The other day, BF & I watched an Animal Planet special on how lizards will volitionally "drop" their tail off when fighting, to distract the opponent. I always knew their tails could break off, but I didn't know it was a defense mechanism. Watching the special grossed me out sooOoOOoOO much, just seeing the tail wiggling around detached from the body w/ all the fibers sticking out. It's something short of a miracle, but it's disgusting.

Today, I was helping my brother fix the gazebo at gramma's, when I moved some wood, and there was a lizard's hind legs and tail sticking out from under the wood! GROSS! My bro & I were so disgusted. Gramma must have heard me tripping out big time b/c she came to the kitchen window (theoretically, "upstairs") and asked what I was giggling about.

Giggling was quite the opposite. Laughter out of sheer disturbance is more accurate.

I yelled "upstairs" to gramma, asking her to come down and into the backyard to move the gross corpse. Gramma thought I was crazy:

G-ma: you have to learn to deal w/ these things on your own!
Me: Gramma, please, can't you just come down?
G-ma: Just get a broom and shoo it away!
Me: It's dead, though!
G-ma: Well then, what's the big deal? Just sweep it away!

I was still freaking out and trying to persuade Gramma, when my bro had ran to the garage to get the broom. So sad that I'm such a pansy and need my gramma to rescue me. When bro came back, he looked at me and said ever so sweetly and seriously, "I thought you like reptiles."

Point of clarification: I love turtles, and they just happen to be reptiles. I HATE lizards and snakes!!! Iguanas, I may be able to handle. But nothing more. Iguanas are a lot prettier than lizards.

My brave bro got a broom and shooed it away, just to find that there was actually another dead lizard under the wood -- w/ its tail detached!!!! BARF!!! So he swept both of them off the gazebo floor and as the first one that was 2/3s smooshed (the smooshed part was all purple and dark!) got close to the edge of the floor, it scampered off! That freaked me out even more!

I looked at my bro and said, "gees, it could have ran off like 5 minutes earlier!" rather than put me through all that trauma. Well, I guess I put myself through the trauma b/c I kept looking at it and grossing myself out. =T

Having a big brother is great.