My Bunny Slippers Just Ran For Cover

There is a conspiracy theory claiming that the world is controlled by lizard people from outer space. 

The idea continues, that all powerful people, including big Hollywood stars, US Presidents, and even my own beloved British Royal Family are in fact, extraterrestrial reptilian humanoids. They can shape-shift to disguise themselves in human form, and they have all been conspiring together since ancient times, to enslave humanity.

Believers in this reptilian collusion, cite findings from the New England Historic Genealogical Society, which discovered that former President Barack Obama is actually related to the Bush family, along with Gerald Ford, Lyndon B Johnson, Harry Truman, James Madison, and Winston Churchill. Surely, such an impossible connection between world leaders cannot be coincidental.

A polling organization found that 4 percent of Americans believe in lizard people, while another 7 percent were unsure. Remarkably, this finding would imply that around 12 million people believe that their leaders are reptilian. And please keep in mind, that this does not count all those who privately believe that lizard people exist, but are too nervous to be ridiculed if they publicly disclose their opinion.

I have to confess, that I am not entirely convinced by the alien reptile theory. It’s true that adult leopard geckos can survive without food for over a month. I also read that one species of lizard has such a low metabolism, it can go for an hour without breathing, but to me this does not translate to an alien invasion.

In the current Coronapocalypse, as we all huddle in our socially distanced, isolated environments, it's easy to imagine that this strange and crazy world has been taken over by something as unbelievable as evil extraterrestrials. This is why I have tried to remain sane and grounded over the past few months, by immersing myself in my home garden, and surrounding myself with the simple pleasures of nature.

Last week I wrote about my close encounters with some amazing garden birds, and this week I held some seeds out, and to my amazement it attracted a group of Nuthatches to feed right from my hand. In the colder weather that has recently arrived to prepare us for winter, I was trying to figure out whether the bird’s hunger outweighed its fear for a tall skinny freckled Englishman like me. Whatever the reason, there is something truly thrilling, when a normally evasive creature like this decides to trust a human.

In a previous article I wrote about my days at the Disney Animation Studio in Orlando, when I was put on display, as part of a Disney World Theme Park Tour. Every so often I would look up, to see a crowd of people behind a glass window staring back at me as I worked on various movies like "Mulan", "Lilo & Stitch", "Tarzan" and "Brother Bear".

One afternoon, my audience watched as this tall skinny freckled Englishman tiptoed around his desk with a large garbage can, and a small sandwich.

Meanwhile, a lizard sat quietly on my chair.

The creature looked so cute, you could be forgiven for thinking that the little guy had just stepped out of a nearby Disney movie. But this was just a regular, common gecko; one of the 15 varieties of lizards found in Florida. My son loved them all, and we came across them all the time, but it was odd to find one on my chair at work; particularly at lunchtime when I wanted to use the space to eat a sandwich.

“Oh-wow! Oh-wow!” I said, to attract attention from any of my nearby colleagues. No one responded, so I continued the conversation a bit louder: “Oh WOW! This is interesting. There’s a lizard on my chair...”

I looked up and noticed a group of people staring back at me through the tour window, so I carefully mouthed some words at them:

“There - is - a - lizard...”

I pointed slowly toward my desk, and repeated emphatically:

“LIZ - ARD.”

“On. My. CHAIR!”

Unfortunately, from their vantage point my audience was unable to see the small creature. Their puzzled looks provided no sympathy, so I decided instead, to put all my efforts into a cunning plan to catch the creature.

As the lizard watched contentedly, I grabbed the nearest empty garbage can and began to walk slowly towards him. It made no attempt to run as I stalked closer, and seemed very calm as I posed myself into what I hoped was a good "trap a creature” position.

And then the lizard was gone.

I don’t know whether it ran as a result of my sudden pounce, or whether I pounced because it suddenly ran. All I know, is that it vanished quickly behind a very heavy set of shelves, leaving an upside down garbage can, an embarrassed Englishman and some very disturbed looking tourists.

As I ate my sandwich, I began to wonder whether the lizard could survive in its new hiding place. I also wondered what a dead lizard would smell like after a week or so. The thought made me feel a little sad for the animal, so I decided to find somewhere else to finish my lunch. When I returned to my desk half an hour later, I noticed two little reptilian eyes staring up at me, this time from under my chair.

“DON’T. MOVE!” I told my new friend with an emphatic point of my finger, and I went to get some help.

I put my head into a colleague's office.

“Whassup?” she asked brightly.

“Err,” I explained unhelpfully. “Can you take a look at this?”

The audience of tourists then watched, as a tall skinny freckled Englishman and a nice lady from Philadelphia studied the floor carefully. Then having assessed the situation, the more intelligent of the duo asked the other one a question:

“Can you hand me that paper cup?

As discreetly as I could, I put down the large garbage can that I was planning to give her, and instead I passed the paper cup.

“It’s quite a speedy creature,” I advised. “I just tried to catch it and it ran away really...”

Before I had time to finish my sentence, the cup had been placed slowly over the lizard, who obviously just decided to be captured, to make me look foolish.

“Amazing,” I said. “It ran away so fast when I tried to trap it.”

“I get them in the house all the time,” my colleague explained, using a piece of paper to make a lid for the cup before handing the whole thing over to me.

The scene that followed, really needed Snow White and Bambi standing next to me, to complete a very Disneyfyingly sweet and lovely scene. I set the lizard free in the garden outside the studio. Then overwhelmed by a sudden fit of Disney parody, I started to sing a high-pitched warbling song that might perhaps attract some animated birds and animals of the forest to join me.

Instead however, my singing caught the attention of one of the directors of “Mulan”, who was just passing by. He watched as the tall skinny freckled Englishman pranced around the garden, destroying not only the flowers, but potentially his career as well.