Terror Lizards

One of my fav jokes when hanging out with my friends next to the lake is to tell them, “Don’t turn your back on the water.” It’s an African saying of gaily dressed people who live in mud-and-wattle huts in crocodile country. I, of course, am far more sophisticated wearing drab polyester in a trailer park and doing my best to turn as many trailers into beer cans as possible. Heck, I don’t have to worry about stepping outdoors into a flock of Terror Parakeets or Terror Muslims!

So, on this cloudy morn after breakfast, I stepped outside to drink the last dregs of my first cup of coffee while standing on the banks of the dinosaurian Orange Lake. One of the pair of moorhens that lives right outside my door immediately spotted me, let out its worried cut-cut-cutting call, and swam slowly away toward the more varied habitats to the east. I think these moorhens have their nest at the east end of the levee that extends from my lot, based on a false-wound theatrical ploy the two gave me last week. So, I imagine the second moorhen was on the nest this morning.

No big deal, just a nice daybreak in cool weather without the sun in my eyes, veg omelet in my stomach, and delicious coffee (ask me to make you a cup some time) on my lips. Then I looked down at my feet at the lakeside floating mat:

Good thing it’s only three feet long!