Weeks ago, I looked in our bathtub and found a small lizard wandering around. I laughed because, you know…only in Florida, right?

Also, it was way better than finding a cockroach in my bed.

I briefly considered relocating the little fella, but decided against it mainly because picking those things up freaks me out. I know they can’t hurt me, but they’re wily and quick and I’m a coward so I left him there and figured Lee could deal with it later.

Only when we came back later, he wasn’t there anymore. Which disturbed me in other ways, but I pushed the thoughts of a lizard crawling in my ear or up my nose in the middle of the night deep into the recesses of my subconscious and went on with my life.

Until I noticed that he continued to show up here and there, always in the bathtub. And I finally figured it out – he lives there. Everyone, I’d like to introduce you to the newest resident of the Stuart House: Bernard (“Bernie”) Stuart – our lizard in the drain.

Yes, my bathtub is atrocious. It has been since the day we moved in. It is nasty and disgusting and I’m waiting (not so paitently) for the day when we can rip that sucker out and put in something functional.

We’ve never used our bathtub, but Bernie seems to have found a home there. He hangs out in the drain. Some nights, we even walk in to find his little head laying just outside the drain, eye closed, snoozing.

So far, we are all living peacefully together. Bernie stays in the tub and the rest of us leave him alone. It says a lot about just how disgusting our tub is that he can apparently live there comfortably. It’s like the friggin spa for lizards with all the crap that he can apparently feed on.

The only thing that gives me pause about the whole situation is my overactive imagination that has, at times, envisioned him mutating from the grossness on which he feeds. If he starts growing at an alarming rate, we’re going to have to move.

Bernie: Teenage Mutant Ninja Lizard.

It could happen…