Skink!

Updates.

The Cheerios I left out for the mice disappeared. I have some (as yet unobserved) new friends.

Time Warner Cable came, at long last, which means I can watch episodes of Mad Men without incessant buffering.

Consequently, when not planning for my classes, or going to training things, I have been watching episode after episode. After episode. It's not as bad as with Six Feet Under, or Battlestar Galactica, or Lost, because the website that hosts the Mad Men episodes only lets you watch 72 minutes of video at a time, and then forces you to wait 54 minutes before watching another 72 minutes. I have no idea how they arrived at those numbers, but as aggravating as it is to have the episode stop ten minutes from the end, it at least has forced me to get up and do things. For example, yesterday it got to be about 4:00 and after getting a hair cut and greeting the cable guy, I'd pretty much just made food and watched more Mad Men. So when my 72 minute limit kicked in, I decided to find a mountain to hike.

The actual mountains were farther away than I felt like driving at 4:00 in the afternoon, but Google Maps told me that Crowders Mountain was much closer, so I told Sack (my GPS) where to take me and she got me there in about 45 minutes. (It's about 25 miles west of Charlotte.) At 1,600-ish feet, the "mountain" itself not especially tall, but it's got its own state park and a bunch of hiking trails. I picked a trail at random and hiked maybe two miles and change. At the end of it (well, the middle really - I went one way then doubled back) was a steep, gravelly hill that led up to some high rocky bits, half of which were roped off with caution tape for some reason. I couldn't see beyond that. I had not planned terribly well for my little excusion, and so was lugging my purse over one shoulder (ridiculous, I know - I need one of those little, tiny backpacks that hikers always have) and was sweating to death and the water bottle that I SHOULD have lugged with me, I did not. But, in my experience, you rarely regret climbing to the top of something very tall, so I kept going up. I had to climb sideways in one direction, then sideways in another, and then suddenly, I looked up. And the rocks and the trees stopped and it all just dropped away. I didn't bring my camera, but I drew a picture:
As I was trying to get the best view I could without pitching off the cliff, I heard a scratchy, scuttling sound off to one side, and in my peripheral vision I saw something moving across the trunk of a pine tree. I backed gingerly off the rocks I'd clambered up on, and moved towards the tree. It was a skink! Ha! The only wild lizards I've seen are those little anoles in Florida; and that skink totally made my afternoon. He disappeared before I could draw his picture, but here's about what he looked like (thanks, Google!)
I was glad it was not a rattlesnake. There were warning signs instructing visitors that the local rattlesnake mothers would be giving birth to their live young in the near future, and to be careful of snakes around rocky crevices. Rattlesnakes! So cool! I mean, yeah, glad I didn't run into any, but seeing one from a distance would have been even more awesome than the skink. I miss my snake friends at the Nature Museum (like Connie here) that I got to play with.