Green lizard – Lacerta viridis

It has been a while since I promised this post. With this blogging is the same as with everything else in life … whishes are one thing and the reality is another. Today I found some time and here we go:

Back in time while being at my parents-in-law house I noticed European green lizard (Lacerta viridis) hiding between the wood. I asked my father in law if he sees it often. And he said: “Sure I do! On most of the sunny days it comes and basks over there.” So I knew it must have a nest or at least shelter very close if not exactly in that wood.

I made the above photo of the guy … yes I know it is male since he was so colorful. You have to know at that time we didn’t have such a good cameras integrated in our smartphones … so to make this photo I had to wait for it and make several trials.

But anyway next spring we could see there were more small lizards crawling around … so the guy was a successful in finding female and they had babies as well. Excellent right?

Once I noticed there is one of those youngsters in my mother-in-law’s garden and I took the advantage and caught it. I was quite lucky as it was male … nice example of a wild coughed male!

I put it in a plastic tube and set up everything he needed for a little bit longer staying in there. I wanted to do some personal research on that animal. Sooner or later my family and friends found out about my new reptile in the house and Greeny became quite popular, starting to get more and more curious visitors. It happened when we celebrated our kids’ birthday Greeny was a main attraction. We put him on a special table in the middle of the happenings so everyone could admire him.

It cause us quite a lot of work to keep catching food for him. Since at that point of time we lived on a countryside we have been able to catch crickets and grasshoppers daily for him.

Well after my research work was done, let’s say after several months, I released him back to the nature, so he was able to feed himself even more and get ready for winter hibernation period on time. Yes these animals do survive winter with snow and everything by finding themselves a safe underground shelter and they hibernate.

After me and my wife learned a lot of things about this type of animals, for example how difficult is to take care about them, how big enclosure they need and of course you have to prepare them to enter the hibernation stage by providing them right food before winter and assuring them correct spot with suitable temperature drop, we decided we will not have lizards in our home. (you may find later it is not completely true but, this is what we thought about it at that time).

So my next blog will be about getting another snake for our home … this time red one and his name was Jamal … more about that soon 🙂 Take care and thank you for reading.