I find him on the hood of my truck most every afternoon. I think he likes the heat of the metal. Which is a little ridiculous, because the climate zone here is pretty much ’sauna.’ But hey, to each his own.

Usually he hops off when I start the engine, but this afternoon when I went out after work to run Christmas errands, he hung on the way down the driveway to the chain link gate. I was a little tempted to let him ride out on the open road, past fields of beans and palms, wind on his scales, just to see what happens. But then I had visions of him letting go, cartwheeling through the air, splattering on the warm gray pavement. I hopped out, and chased him off into the grass. Maybe he’ll go eat the bugs that are eating the eggplant. Stranger things have happened