The remains of the Poinciana tree in our backyard. I had planned on cutting off the remaining branches off this week.

While pulling weeds I saw movement in the tree that definitely wasn’t a bird.

It was a Texas Spiny Lizard, and a big one at that. We have quite a few smaller ones that we regularly see on the ground in both the front and back, but this one is the largest one. A few years ago we had one we named Lizzy. We would always talk to it when we saw it and never tried to scare it. After a while it never even froze or scurried away when it saw us. Sitting out back in our lawn chairs it would walk all around us. We were sorry when it disappeared, never to return. The tree is going to have to go, but for the time being it has a brief reprieve. These lizards don’t live in trees, rather their home is a hole in the ground, but they do like to spend time up high. Lucky lizard, temporarily lucky tree.