Have you ever seen a legless lizard?
There really is one and we have it in Oklahoma. It’s the slender glass lizard and its distribution is from eastern Oklahoma through the southeastern U.S. A western species occurs west of Oklahoma.
The slender glass lizard’s coloring is tan to gold, and it has a dark stripe down the middle of its back and finer stripes on the sides. Adults are 2-3 feet long (some longer).
Glass lizards are often mistaken for snakes, but they have small ear openings and movable eyelids which snakes do not have. I doubt that anyone would get close enough to check it out, though. Their movement tends to be straight rather than serpentine like a snake, and when in a hurry they “throw” themselves into the grass at the edge of a trail.
It’s called a glass lizard because it can break off its tail when confronted by a predator. The autotomized, wiggling tail distracts the predator, allowing the lizard to escape. The lizard is secretive. It burrows and is rarely seen, even where it is common.
This lizard has a broken tail which happened sometime in the past and has started to regrow. The new tail won’t be as long as the original one.
Each morning on my walkabout I go to the area where I have seen glass lizards hoping to see one, but so far, I haven’t.
