Kellie's Lizard

My half sister Kellie is unique in many ways – bless her heart. Whether meaning to or not, you can count on her to be entertaining.

She came home one day after competing in the Santa Barbara County Special Olympics, all excited because my kids and I had come down from Oregon to visit. After she came into the dining room to pass out bear hugs, she ran to her room instructing me not to go anywhere. She had something she wanted to show me. I had no idea what to expect. Kellie was a collector of things. From three foot tall KISS dolls to countless vinyl records, living things, magazines, basically you name it – it was in her room.

She came out with something behind her back and told me to shut my eyes. ‘Crap!’ I thought. She did have a tarantula once. I don’t do bugs – AT ALL! Seeing the alarm on my face, my stepmother assured me it would be alright. She knew my fear so I trusted her and shut my eyes.

“OK Cynthia Louise Huston, open your eyes!” (She almost always called me by my whole legal name, part of her uniqueness.)

I peeped through squinted eyes. Whatever she had was inside of a mason jar. I opened my eyes to check it out. Inside, hanging on for dear life was an itty bitty blue bellied lizard, the smallest I had ever seen.

“It’s really cute Kellie, where did you get it?” I asked. It was a perfect little miniature.

She pointed out to the back patio. My dad loves to bar-be-que, only using oak wood. He always had a wood pile on the back patio just for his pit. It was on this wood pile that Kellie found this terrified little creature.

“You need to put some dirt in there and poke holes in the lid.” I was fearful for the little things future. “What are you feeding it?” I added.

“I don’t feed it nothing.” She answered, pulling the jar back protectively. She could tell I was going from curious to concern. She didn’t like it.

I explained that she needed to care for it or it would die. She didn’t want to hear it and stomped off back to her room. I made a mental note to sneak into her room later and rescue the little reptile.

This was normal Kellie activity, so I quickly went back to the business of catching up on family chit chat with my parents. My dad got busy doing one the things that he does best which is bar-be-que-ing Tri Tip. I helped my step mom in the kitchen with preparing the other food.

After dinner my youngest son, Ryan, about 12 at the time, and I sat at the dinning room table looking at family photos of things we had missed out on since moving to Oregon. My dad also built racing engines so we looked at pictures of before and after shots of race cars. His favorite was a big yellow mustang which was converted to a nitro burning mud bogger, known as ‘The Mudstang’.

Suddenly Kellie came running out of her room, all upset. She couldn’t find her lizard. I felt a little sad because I hadn’t had a chance to go on my rescue mission. The poor thing was on its own now. I had a visual of it being flattened somewhere in her clutter, or maybe even stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

I asked her what happened and she turned away, fighting tears, both hands covering her face. As she turned away, there hanging onto her upper back was the little lizard – a stow away. My son and I looked at each other, eyes wide in amazement and fighting like hell not to burst out laughing. Ryan sprung into action. He put an arm around Kellie as if to console her. As he did so, he grabbed up the little lizard. He nodded at me and I knew in an instant that it was my cue and I took it from his hand. I took it out to the wood pile and set it free while Ryan went into Kellie’s room and pretended to help her look for it.. The whole thing went together beautifully in a matter of seconds, as if we had planned it all out.

Of course the lizard would never be found, but it kept Kellie occupied to look for it for the next few days. Her sadness waned over this time and eventually all was well.