Texas Spiny Lizard

Good morning

We have been working on a house in Austin and one afternoon we arrived to find this lovely Texas spiny lizard sunning on some old bricks in the yard. The bricks are reclaimed from the chimney of the house. The house was built in 1925. When one of the previous owners modernized the house, they took out the heating stove. It did not appear to have had a fireplace, but rather a hole in the bricks for a pipe from a wood burning stove. The chimney had been walled in and was this small, square, floor to ceiling outjut in the corner of the living room. The house had not been taken care of when we purchased it and needed major repairs, this was how we discovered the old chimney. When we first reclaimed them, a neighbor of ours, Robert Burns, took them to use in front of his house along the street. After he sold the house and the new owner remodeled, the new owner knowing that they had come from our house, returned them.

Our gray cat is a hunter. He was homeless until we rescued him when he was about four months old. He still has the hunting instinct. While we were working in the yard last week, my husband noticed the cat chasing a lizard. It ran up a tree stump and we stepped into rescue it.

The Texas Spiny Lizard (Sceloporus olivaceus) is common in our area. They eat insects and are fun to watch. This fellow was very calm when we approached him and let my husband move him to another, safer spot to continue his life free of meddlesome kitties.