The many faces of the alligator lizard

That alligator lizard in the picture was serious about living up to its name. It and my son Caleb's finger met while we were exploring the Lava Beds National Monument back in the 1980s.

They had come upon each other while my wife, Sue, and the rest of our kids were pursuing and tagging monarch butterflies on the northern part of the monument. It did eventually spit out Caleb's finger, but little did we know how aggressive that beautiful, ambitious lizard could be.

The alligator lizard clan was first classified in the 1830s by Arend Friedrich August Wiegmann, a German zoologist and herpetologist (a person who studies lizards, snakes, and amphibians). In 1835, he founded, together with other scholars, the zoological periodical known as Wiegmann's Archive.

Wiegmann specialized in classifying Mexican fish and herps, and in 1834 he published Herpetologia Mexicana, a monograph on the reptiles of Mexico. One of his discoveries from his Mexican travels, Weigman's Alligator Lizard, Gerrhonotus liocephalus is still on the books the way he described it.

But all the other alligator lizards found in the western U.S. have been renamed and reclassified for their coloring, habitat, geographic locations, and other traits.

According to Al St. John's Lone Pine field guide, Reptiles of The Northwest, he's listed the Oregon alligator lizard, the California alligator lizard and a bunch of others running around in California as separate species, such as the San Francisco, Sierra, Northwestern, Shasta, and five or six species of alligator lizards in Canada.

While naming them is difficult, the diet of the alligator lizard is simple: whatever will fit into its mouth. That can be other, smaller lizards and snakes which are devoured as soon as they're spotted. A nice fat and juicy scarab beetle will vanish down the lizard's gullet in the blink of an eye.

If the alligator lizard's an occupant of your kitchen garden you will never need to apply any pesticides; cabbage looper caterpillars will be gobbled up; along with flea beetles; corn borer caterpillars; squash bugs; cutworm larvae; and other plant pests.

Alligator lizards are almost fearless when it comes to prey; mice and even a juvenile gopher will be grabbed and swallowed. But then there's that old adage, "He who lives by the sword..." Alligator lizards are often caught and eaten by the American kestrel, who also feeds it/them to the babies. Gopher snakes, whip snakes and the like will not hesitate to take an alligator lizard for a snack.

The most surprising location I found alligator lizards was on the coast, around OMSI's Camp Arago near North Bend, where I suppose some hair-splitter has named them the Coastal or Cape Arago alligator lizard. They love hunting for prey behind the dunes where OMSI students watched them devouring beetles and other inhabitants of the sandy soils. We watched one who was agile enough to hang onto vegetation and grasp butterflies, moths and honeybees as they sailed by close to the ground looking for flowering plants to nectar in.

Surprisingly, I've never found an alligator lizard in Sisters Country, or around Central Oregon for that matter. Maybe it's too cold in winter for them; perhaps our lizard-eating kestrels are too efficient and the lizards can't escape them. Or I'm going blind. So, please go out and find one for me in the Trout Creek Natural Area, Camp Polk or around Smith Rock.

The sex-life of alligator lizards is hard on the females because of the male's tendency to take possession of the female of his choice. During the spring breeding season, a male lizard grabs onto the head of a female with his tiny, needle-sharp teeth until she's ready to let him mate with her. They can remain attached this way for several hours, almost oblivious to their surroundings. Besides keeping her from running off to mate with another male, this probably shows her how strong and suitable a mate he is.

The female will give birth to four to 15 live young between June and September, and she'll keep them away from the "Old Man," just in case. But keeping them safe from a marauding kestrel will be difficult to impossible.