A tiny lizard peeping over a ledge. He let me get surprisingly close without running off, no doubt in part due to the warm sun shining on his back.

Where I come from we don’t have squirrels or lizards, or any cool wildlife, really. I hope that sort of explains my fascination with skittish wildlife, and my need to run after them whenever I bump into them. Not surprisingly the only time this happens is on holiday in some foreign country. Lizards are fairly benign, but it has gotten me into trouble before. In Jamaica, I found out the hard way that crabs can walk straight forward. When I tried to shoo a crab off the footpath, it lunged at me with snapping claws. Had this been your average Dutch crab it might’ve been a cute attack. It might’ve nibbled on my shoe a little, before being crushed by my size 13 foot. The Jamaican version, on the other hand, was roughly the size of my head. I ran like hell, and I like to think that was one of the wiser decisions I’ve made in my life.