Mollie brought this little lizard into the house Saturday afternoon.

It’s small, probably only about an inch and a half long. I have seen a few young lizards like this on the driveway. It was only a matter of time until Mollie caught one.

This one seemed unharmed. I scooped it up and took it outside. I released it on an old oak stump not far from the house.

It’s an Eastern Fence Lizard. I think it’s probably a male, and probably only weeks to a couple of months old. Adults are around four to seven inches long.

They have a fairly large range, from northern Florida to New Jersey and New York in the north, and from the Atlantic coast as far west as Colorado and Wyoming.

They are arboreal, although they are so well camouflaged that they must be hard to see on a tree. The imported fire ant can attack and kill these lizards as well as their eggs. I hope my usual practice of killing every fire ant nest I find helps these little creatures.