Our first guest was a Texas Spiny Lizard. We caught him (or her?) in our back yard and kept him for one week.
Description
The Texas Spiny Lizard is a fairly large lizard. They can grow up to a foot long. They are in the same family as the horned lizard. Our guest was only 6 inches long from head to tail.
Native or Introduced Species?
The Texas Spiny Lizard is a native species. You can capture/collect them as long as you have a Texas hunting license.
Diet
We fed it crickets and wood lice (doodle bugs/rollie-pollies).
Habitat/Range
The Spiny Lizard is found in Texas, Oklahoma, and Mexico. It likes semi-arid regions. We found this one near a rotting stump.
Any Special Behaviors?
The lizard shed its skin on the third day that we had him. It was also fairly tame and we could handle it without it really trying too hard to escape.
Release
We released the lizard at the exact spot where we found him.
Very nice accommodations! My lizards who visit my front porch every night will be jealous.
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing this blog. I've learned a lot about lizards today! We have geckos in our back yard. One time, I found one in the closet of my office. He was a big one. We trapped him and let him go outside.
ReplyDeleteThis guy is so cute! What did you do with the shed skin?
Our local zoo has a nature exchange program where you can trade nature items that you find and get cooler stuff. We traded the skin for some cool rocks!
DeleteDon't see many lizards here in the big city of Toronto, but once while on a vacation in Costa Rica we had a ground floor room with a sliding patio door and a giant lizard with a missing tail (bony bit was visible at the truncated end of what he DID have) would come by in the morning and afternoon and knock on our door - really! Whacked it repeatedly with the end of what was left of his tail until we opened the sliding door and then he waited to see what we would throw him. We called him Stumpy and found he liked watermelon and other fresh fruit. He turned up his nose and ignored raisins and nuts. We did not try to catch bugs for him.
ReplyDeleteHow wonderful! thank you for sharing all of this information. I showed your blog to my young boys and they enjoyed reading about your lizards too. They are actually quite jealous that they cannot catch lizards in our backyard... but all we have in NH are frogs and chipmunks (or snakes, yikes!)
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I was going to ask if you kept the skin but that is so cool that you traded it for some rocks. this is a wonderful blog, hotel and a super cool way to spend your summer weeks with new friends, learning new things and sharing with others! Awesome :)))
ReplyDeleteI love your "Hotel 4 Lizards" idea and find your blog very interesting! It has made me much more aware of the wildlife in my own yard. Imagine my surprise yesterday morning when I woke up to find a large Texas Spiny Lizard sunning outside by bedroom window!
ReplyDeleteI have one in my room too! I should make a blog about lizards I catch as well !
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