Lizard Surprise!

In preparation for a school project, I took this picture down from the dining room wall.

Rabbit Trail: It's one of the few special things I was given when my grandpa died in '06. It's in my childhood memories, having always hung on the dining room wall in my grandparents' home on a dairy farm in central KY. My grandma rarely changed the decor - too much farm work waiting, too many meals to cook and serve, too many muddy boot-prints to clean up.

When it was lifted away from the wall, this fell out:

These plastic animals originate from the 90s when my boys loved their 'animal box' (small storage box chock full of plastic/rubber/resin animals). Those days are over, of course, but our young nephew, who visits occasionally, asks for the box right away! Plastic animals will travel, and so there is a tiny plastic Rottweiler residing in one of the wells of the treadmill; there's aneensy, weensy salamander near the floorlamp in the living room; another dog (I'm sorry to tell you it's a pooping dog) squatting on the windowsill behind the curtain at the top of the stairs. And apparently, someone* helped this lizard find a place to live behind the picture frame. I wasn't even startled when it dropped at my feet. Random Items Hidden Out In The Open are a defining characteristic of our home. The only one that spooks me a little bit when it catches my eye is the small turtle who peeks out from the canned foods shelf in the basement.

* not my dear little nephew, who is much too short to have played this trick...