When the Sanctimony of Life Wakes You Up From a Series of Morning Texts from Pensacola, Florida (You've Got a Friend)

I awoke with a message: Look. A friend visited me.

It was a lizard in a candle holster on the back porch in Pensacola, Florida.

I'm not sure if he's alive or dead.

How else does one respond? If you turn the candle over and the lizard runs, I think he's alive. But if he just falls, you have a dead lizard.

I love my friend Susan James. She completes my world and I cherish our back and forth banters, whether on phone, text, email, or ZOOM. I am jealous she has Christmas lizards that run throughout her Floridian landscape. If I had them, I'd want to name each and every one. I'd talk to them regularly, and likely build them gnome homes and exotic landscapes. 

There was so much rejoice in her text when she tilted the candle to release the lizard back to his natural environs. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah. He was alive.

The lizard had risen. 

I can't imagine going out on the back patio with morning coffee only to discover such a conundrum. The photos came at one at a time. It took a short while to get her to turn the candle holder. Be brave, Susan. Be brave. She anticipated the worst. I wanted the best. The best is what won in the end. 

And one of my students is creating a series of lessons based on what is life for her biology classes. I couldn't help but send her this sequence of photos. Life is when one gets trapped in a human-designed contraption and, somehow, finds a way out.

Go, Leonardo Lambert Linguini III. Congratulations on sustaining a night in a candle holder only to be triumphant in the morning. Our best to you.

Pelican & Frog. Two peas in a pod.