our animal friends, part 3

I've never before lived anywhere that featured lizards; they've always been sort of alien, unknowable creatures to me, sort of like armadillos or Phil Collins fans. But as it turns out, there are lots of lizards in Italy. You'll see them scuttling up the walls or perched on a sunny spot, keeping warm and, I suppose, on the lookout for flies or whatever it is they eat. I always get absurdly happy to see them. Beth, Savannah girl that she is, doesn't really understand (plenty of lizards down there), but I just like them.



Here's a highlander lizard (you can tell by the li'l kilt and bagpipe) from Palestrina, in the hills of Lazio, not too far from Rome. (He was, of course, not harmed in the making of this blog post.) This particular lizard was from the site of the temple of Fortuna at Praeneste, which has one of the most spectacular settings of any ancient site I know of, built into a hill way above the town. Here's a link to a reconstruction of the temple complex: ramps! arches! a theater or theater-like dealie at the top! It's the best. You can get a sense of what it looked like from the (relatively modern) building at the top, where the museum is now:



Mr. Lizard came from the big open rectangular space near the top, which is now a grassy field. There's also a tremendous view from there:



I believe that those are the Alban hills in the background; at any rate, not a bad spot to build a sanctuary to Fortune, and not a bad spot sit and catch some bugs. (Which I did. and they were dee-licious.)