I can’t move anything. Right before I got to where I am now every move I had made halted in this clear tar. I can’t wiggle my toes, my eye and the side of my face is glued down and shut; but at least I am not alone. Someone got here right before I did. She was laying flat on their stomach with her arms pinned down by this goo. She was a lizard, just like me.

I didn’t know for sure what was going on, but I knew what the end result was going to be. Another member of this trap, laid belly up with a single leg frozen in the air. Those toad guys have such long legs, to think someone like him couldn’t save himself makes me feel hopeless. He look dried up and hollow. It seems as of this moment, the only option is to give up….

I don’t know how long I was asleep but I remember waking up by being tugged on by my tail. I’m terrified. This had to be it. The garage door lifted up, exposing our hiding spot as we lay defenseless. A human picked up the boxy trap we were in and brought us into their home.

The trap opens up, and I have never felt so small. We are still on the trap but we have no cover, I am sitting in a silver bowl, no choice but to look up. My friend doesn’t look so good. This surely is it.

The human comes back and rubs thick liquid on my head, my toes, and traces the silhouette of my body. She rubs at my limbs and under my chin. I feel myself becoming looser, slowly being lifted off the sticky trap. It hurt a little, but as I feel my eye resurface, I thought maybe this isn’t it. I’m put in a different bucket, leaving my friend behind on the trap. I can’t know for sure if her fate will be the same.

I’m covered in a greasey substance on top of the trap’s toxic goo. Is this is it or am I waiting for a less forgiving fate? Suddenly I see my friend being gently put in my bucket to join me. We are free from the trap, but we are still far from free it seems. We lay on top of each other, unable to move from exhaustion and the blanket of poison weighing us down. I’m so tired. Whatever happens next will happen.

The human picks me up and takes me back to the bucket, which now has water in it. I’m being laid down, to what almost looks like a good way to go right now. I feel warm water but I am not submerged. I’m being held securely in their fleshy hand, but in my current state freedom will be the death of me. I start to feel bristles running against my scales, along with the human rubbing their fingers firmly yet gently on me.

Once I’m out of the bowl and put in yet another bucket, I am weak, I am exhausted, I am scared; but I feel like me again. My friend joins me again, the consistency of seeing her alive with me brings comfort. We never did see that toad again. It’s hard to know when you’re being saved, but we are confident in knowing what death is.

We are lifted out and set in a plant pot with a little pool of water. Around us we are sheltered with plants. I turn around and see the sky, I know where I am now. As the human goes back to their den, we lay where we were left by the human for some time. My friend eventually leaves, I follow shortly.

And in the time I rested before going on my way, I kept wondering; How could humans want to hurt me yet help me at the same time? Human inconsistency is far more frightening than the consistency of wild nature.

****I based this off a true experience I had when I saved a pair of lizards off a glue trap. I made a tik tok documenting the rescue if you want to see the actual lizards, profile is @manthawashere on TT.

(It wasn’t my glue trap, my parents had a bug guy come and they didn’t know he had put glue traps there without telling them; otherwise they would’ve said no)