New Page 1

The Great Lizard Adventure

A view of the LaCreek wildlife preserve from the tower

This summer Wayne, Mic, XXX, Neili, and I embarked on a journey that would take us to LaCreek Wildlife Preserve just southeast of Martin, SD to see if we could find and/or capture one or more of the four species of lizards that roam the sand dunes on the South Dakota / Nebraska border. How did we get this wild hair? Well, as with most of our wild ideas, Wayne was the ringleader. He is working on his PhD in Neurobiology at the University of South Dakota where he mainly concentrates on behavior of a specific species of lizard, the Anoles. He recently came in contact with a gentleman who described a species of lizard indigenous to a region of South Dakota encompassed by the LaCreek Wildlife Preserve, and Wayne, his reptilian interests piqued, was eager to find some for himself. The first sight when you come into LaCreek is the tower--once a XXXX it is now a great place to see the sights of this beautiful preserve.

A view from the tower of some of the man-made lakes

Thunderstorm on the prairie

Wayne and his girlfriend Neili

We took two trips out to the preserve--one in June? and the other in late August. During the first trip we ran into some pretty warm weather--into the high 90's--and we didn't find any lizards until the last day, when we ran into a bunch of 5-lined Skinks. Fast little buggers! We searched for the lizards around natural springs that abound in LaCreek. From these natural springs comes such a great amount of water that the park has numerous large lakes, some still stocked with trout, and others maintained for waterfowl.

Water gushing from the earth

The springs arose in the midst of what amounted to a desert--hot, sandy, and dry. These sand dunes were full of yucca, cacti, and wildflowers of all kinds, and as we searched for the lizards we noticed that there were tracks and trails throughout the sand.

Something's been here...

A 5-lined skink hiding in a yucca

The next trip was an even bigger success. The lizard we were after, the Fence Lizard (xxxxx xxxx), was out and about, and we were even able to capture some young ones to get a closer look. They seemed to keep to the yuccas as well, although where the skinks preferred the hot summer sun, the Fence Lizards preferred cooler conditions (low 80's). In fact, we didn't even see any skinks on this expedition. We also ran into numerous other wildlife, from insects to wildflowers to other reptiles (such as a recently-deceased rattlesnake and a xxxxxx snake).