I was (finally!) doing some housework yesterday when I was interruputed by a very bizarre incident. As I was vacuuming the floor behind some curtains, the vacuum suddenly started making a horrendous sound and I suddenly smelled rubber burning. I tipped it over to look at the bottom, and there was a very large alligator lizard stuck between the beater-bar thingy and the framework of the vacuum. The lizard had stopped the beater bar cold and the rubber drive belt broke. The lizard's tail was torn off and it's body was pretty badly mangled. I extracted the lizard and laid it outside on the cement slab outside my back door. I felt absolutely certain it was a goner, judging from the condition of it's twisted body. It was also bleeding from the mouth. But when I came out to check on about 20 minutes later, it was gone!
I can only hope he recovered and was okay. I could not find him anywhere in the yard. He must have came into the house earlier when I had the door open for an hour or so after I mopped the kitchen floor. When I went to get a new belt today, I told the guy at the vacuum shop what had happened and he said that now he had heard it all. He had heard stories of all kinds of things getting stuck in vacuum cleaners, including mice and rats and pet hamsters and parakeets, but this was the first time he heard of a lizard doing it.
