...a vowel-mouthed tail-less reptile?
Obviously, you've been down 'cross the border a few times; gotta wonder at what evolution had been playing, lo those years ago. We somethimes find them on the walls here, too, but the explanation is that they are too slow to avoid the closing shutters and, snip, off with them!
Did you know that the very young ones, at around an inch-and-a-half can actually squeal - not when they lose their tails, I mean, but from fear? Found such a tiny one on the wood that's kept up on the terrace apart from the main pile so that it stays dry; it ran off the piece and I eventually coaxed it into a sheet of thin card so that I could remove it from the danger of incineration and deposit it on the shedding bark of the eucalyptus stump in the garden. That's when it uttered its tiny squeal - the reptile, not the tree, of course. This is for real, not a joke. I had always thought those creatures mute.
Rob C
