There was a bullfrog I loved. When I was five years old in my Aunt Marcia’s wedding, I said to her, Come see my frog! He was at the pond, just down the hill. “I want to,” she said, but she was the bride and could not leave her party and guests, so I said, I’ll go get him.
All my life I’ve been bringing the frog to the house. A few years after Aunt Marcia’s wedding my mother and I moved to the city and I found lizards in pet shops. We looked at each other through the glass of fish tanks. I remember thinking that a lizard was like a frog, only able to be out of water. My mother let me bring some of the lizards and turtles and snakes home as pets. Now I live in a barn with five big lizards and I am always striving to make a home that will be good for them, and my husband, and me, so we can live together under one roof. Once I said to my husband, No lizards, no love. I didn’t mean that I would not love him, I meant that without lizards in our home I would have a hard time feeling love for my life.
I write nonfiction, and fiction for young readers. I write about lizards, snakes, turtles, and frogs, particularly my relationship with them. I love animals, but it’s reptiles who are not known and not understood, and it’s my job to change that. The hardest part is getting across their value beyond their role in the health of our global ecosystem. I think that in the subtext of whatever I write, I keep saying, try sitting still with a lizard and see how you calm down and start to open, and feel grounded; reconnected with the other, with all life –with your own feelings.
