It was 1985, and I was cutting another net lane to catch Wood Thrushes as part of my Master’s thesis research in southern Veracruz, Mexico. Steve Stucker was there with me, and our machetes were flashing as we cut rainforest vegetation to create a 12-meter lane about 1.5 meters wide where we would put a mist net.

This was hard, routine work that we were used to. I’ve done it hundreds of times in a wide variety of vegetation. But this time one of my machete strokes was aimed at more than just another plant in the rainforest understory—too late to stop, at the last instant I saw a cryptically colored lizard hiding on the very spot my machete was going to hit. I accidentally killed the little guy. I felt bad, but it did give us a close look at a really cool animal, and I brought it back to the trailer that evening and pickled it for a scientific specimen. It has a strangely shaped head, and Steve and I called the species “knobhead,” not having any better label for it, being such bird-oriented people that we did not have any herpetological identification guides along to help us.

Knobhead came north with us at the end of the field season, along with other miscellaneous specimens that the folks at Customs enjoyed looking over. During the course of the season I’d added other pickled samples to the jar, hoping to identify some of the fruits that Wood Thrushes were eating. Perhaps because the jar of pickled lizard also had these samples in it, I wound up hauling it around with me rather than get the lizard into a collection, and then when I left Minnesota it wound up at my folks’ place with a lot of other miscellaneous things, like books.

Knobhead, the pickled lizard

Well, old knobhead lay unperturbed in its jar for years before it finally had to be dealt with as my parents downsized. It wound up at my sister Katy’s house, where she was kind enough to hold it for me until I could make final arrangements. The alcohol level in the jar had decreased to rather low levels, and Katy was generous with her vodka to top it off and keep decomposition at bay.

Finally, though, enough was enough, and Katy suggested that I bring it home with me on my last trip there. We dumped the alcohol, padded the lizard, and packed it jar and all into my checked baggage. Now it sits in the garage here, waiting for me to deal with the other samples and get it to the museum. Poor old knobhead. We’ll get there.

Knobhead before heading to the Far North