Night Lizards and a Story from the Past

"House Lizards"
We have a lot of geckos outside our house. Our kids call them "Night Lizards" and every night before they go to bed, we go out on the back porch and see how many night lizards we can spot. Most of the time, they tend to congregate near the windows where more insects are located because of the light from the house. 

There have been a couple of nights this summer/fall where we've only seen one. I think the most we saw in a night was seven. I'm personally a fan of lizards in general and enjoy going out to look for them as much as the kids do. 

Now, I will tell you that when I go outside, I step out carefully and look above the door for any critter that might try to sneak inside. We've seen a couple of the baby geckos in the house this summer.

Which leads to the story that has emotionally scarred me. Seriously. 

Story from the Past
In June of 2009, I was letting our dogs outside before going to bed for the night. I opened the back door and the dogs raced outside. I stood just inside waiting for them. A moment later, I felt something touch my head. I immediately thought of a lizard or something similar and reached my hand up as it moved towards the top rim of my glasses. The moment I touched it, I know something wasn't right. I stepped backwards, grabbed the creature on my head, and pulled it down. 

It turned out to be a snake that had already wrapped around my glasses. I threw the snake to the floor (In the house, mind you. Not my finest moment - out the back door would have been MUCH better) and it took my glasses with it. 

So there I am, standing in the kitchen trying to squint at the reptile on the floor in the utility room in an attempt to ID it. I'm yelling for my husband who comes in, completely shocked to see the 18-24 inch snake laying there. 

Before we could figure out what to do about it, it crawled into the cabinet housing our air conditioner. 

We called someone to come and catch it, but they were unable to find it, saying that it probably went under the house via a large opening beneath the air conditioner. We never did see it again, but it was days before we kept watching for it (and we kept heavy books or furniture covering the air conditioner vents in the floor that night just to make ourselves feel better). 

We were told this particular snake was most likely a bull snake (non-poisonous) and had probably been trying to move across the door in search of a bird's nest. When I opened the door, it lost its balance and fell on me. 

Six years later, I still can't walk out of a door - front or back - at night without looking up first. I just pray something like that never happens to me again because once in a lifetime was enough for me! 

Have you had a nightmarish run in with nature?