I was filming Friday on an increasingly grey day. While the cameras were pointed at the stump I was still watching for the Central Driveway Dragon, whom I had not seen in a few days, but instead happened on the longest alligator lizard I’ve seen in quite a few years. He saw me and bolted under the motorcycle and into the weeds.
he looks to be at least 14 inches long. Big bruiser of a lizard.
An hour later, though, after collecting a camera I had set up where the planter dragon hangs out, I stumbled upon him crossing the driveway. He tried to hide by pushing himself up against the edge of a piece of carpet, so I sat until he started to move, then took a few portraits, then some video when he tried to stealthily sneak past me into the planter. Then I took some portraits of him in the planter before leaving him to bed down for the night.
I measured the edge of the carpet where he was hiding and he looks to be at least 14 inches long. Big bruiser of a lizard. No wonder the Central Dragon has ceded his territory! They are pretty common on Southern California, though I don’t see them here as often as I did growing up in the East County. They are mostly harmless, unless you’re a bug. If you try to pick them up they’ll bite, though it doesn’t hurt, and they will poop on you, but otherwise they just hang out and eat anything small enough to fit in their mouth.
As I mentioned, I took some video. I had my portrait lens on the camera, the 105dc, not the native lens that would have been more appropriate, but it’s better to shoot than to fuss with your equipment and miss shooting a scene you may never see again. Still impressed with the Z6 video, even with a non-stabilized, manual-focus lens on a dark and grey evening I can get passable footage.
I didn’t bother adding music. Obviously, when editing the raw footage I should have used something like the original most annoying remix to hit the internets in the twenty teens. In fact, I think I’m going to name this gallery after that!
Enjoy the magic of Chip the Rapper. If you let the video run to the end you get a special reward, but fair warning, you can’t fast forward! You have to watch it in real time. But it’s totally worth it. I swear. I would never lie to you.
Just to put your mind at ease, I found the Central Dragon the next day at the Southern end of the driveway, where he was running around the steps to the back yard and generally being his colorful, belligerent self. Just in a slightly different territory.
