The Lizards are at it again.
No news on the manuscript library front. In fact no news at all about anything, apart from the perennially interesting news item that the lizard mating season is once more upon us, with all that means of amusing dramas of passion, jealousy, duelling, rejection and eventual conquest played out on the forecourt of the hotel.

I am having a ‘robe day’ as they say in New Orleans.

I contemplate the lizards and note once more how courting behaviour is remarkably similar among lizards to that perceived to be normal in humans. I say ‘perceived’ since I have never felt part of it.
Lizards and homo sapiens of the male variety chase the female. The female coyly runs away, pretending not to be interested. But she IS. Her interest is evident because if for some reason the male ceases his attentions and concentrates on another female instead, she will come running back. This mating behaviour repeats itself almost exactly in human females who devise mating strategies like‘playing hard to get’ and write books about it called ‘the Rules’ and such like, which become big business.
This phenomenon has always been incomprehensible and faintly ridiculous to me, perhaps to my loss.

If a male has been chasing me and I don’t like him I will run away. If he then turns to another female, that is a relief. If a male chases me and I like him, I will not run away. I will turn and face him squarely and say OK fine, let’s get on with it. Then he may well run away by sheer surprise. I have also been known to chase myself, sometimes with success, but one never sees a female lizard chasing a male.