Hatching Cute

We left Miami on Sunday and on Saturday evening after returning from the Keys, I took Susa for a walk and poked around in the underbrush as I often do. While Susa sat on a rock and watched birds, I turned over rocks in hopes that I would see another creature like the rare yellow banded black snake we saw the day before, a tiny little 6 inch snake under our plastic gas tank. On the second rock I turned over, a strange bored out coral looking rock, I found a tiny white egg. At first I considered it might be some kind of spider egg sack but it wasn’t stuck to anything so my first tom-boyish reaction was to pick it up and take it home to see if I can hatch it. I figured a rock outside in the cold has as much chance as a rock in my terrarium inside the trailer. My plan was to release it of course, since I would have no chance of feeding it, but the temptation of seeing what it was was too strong.
Since it was winter, I had no idea if it was fertilized, going to hatch soon or in weeks or never so I just hoped.
The next morning I looked in the terrarium, seeing one of my flowers had died, when a little streak of darkness shot across the moss. It was a little tiny brown anole! The most common lizards around but still cute as hell. Of all the years I’ve owned reptiles and amphibians, I’ve never had an egg hatch so I was pretty excited.
Luckily he hatched on a warm day so I put him on some grass in the sun next to the rock where I found his egg and wished him luck.