Meet Fred

This is Fred:

Fred is a lizard who lives in the light fixture on the outdoor stairwell of our apartment building:

(Witness teeny Fred-head poking out of the concrete casing.)

Fred's very shy, only coming out on occasional evenings. Due to this shyness, we don't know what kind of lizard Fred is, or even if Fred is a he-Fred or a she-Fred. You can imagine the difficulty of photographing a lizard who lives in a light when it's pitch black outside and the lizard won't let you get more than about three feet from the steel pylon before bolting back up into the concrete. So I know these are lousy photographs but think of it like Sasquatch: the important thing isn't the quality of the image, but rather the capturing of a magnificent mythical creature on film.

We consider Fred to be a good omen. Just last night, I saw Fred on the stairwell as I came home, and then spent the evening freaking out because I thought there was an international date line error in our Christmas tickets home. Then Justin came home and pointed out that the tickets were fine. Which I really should have known - as if they'd go wrong on a day when I saw Fred!