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New Species of Legless Lizard Discovered Near LAX Runway
From an article at Discovery News:
"A bustling airport would hardly seem the place to find a new species of reclusive animal, but a team of California biologists recently found a shy new species of legless lizard living at the end of a runway at Los Angeles International Airport. What’s more, the same team discovered three additional new species of these distinctive, snake-like lizards that are also living in some inhospitable-sounding places for wildlife: at a vacant lot in downtown Bakersfield, among oil derricks in the lower San Joaquin Valley and on the margins of the Mojave desert." Here's some more information in the form of a press release from Cal State Fullerton, home to James Parham, one of the discoverers.
Are we sure their legs weren't just run over?
They're called snakes.
And thus it begins.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
He's been hiding behind my zipper for years.
Or there are a bunch of young boys living nearby.
#DeleteChrome
Found anywhere else than beside a very busy freight airport, you might be tempted to believe they have been there all along. But finding Four new species right next to an airport (and as yet, nowhere else), you have to allow for the possibility that they arrived in cargo.
My GF reports encountering at least four species of legless lizard in that bar next to the airport on the left. She reckons they arrived as passengers though, not in cargo.
Like a legless chicken.
They're called snakes.
Too right. "I'm sick of these motherfucking legless lizards on this motherfucking plane" just doesn't have the same zing to it.
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
Los Angeles, August 12, 2082
On Tuesday, a public hearing on shutting down the Los Angeles International Airport was again disrupted by conservationists. This is the second public hearing the LAX Airport Authority has held to consider repurposing the airport property into a nature preserve. Decreasing numbers of passengers and reduced tarmac requirements for liftoff for vessels such as the Boeing 998 Starduster have obviated the need for a traditional airport. In an attempt to stop the meeting, several conservationists handcuffed themselves to the podium. With signs and chants, the conservationists expressed their dismay at shutting down the fragile ecosystem of the rare legless lizard found only at LAX. "Every change the [LAX Airport] Authority makes to the airfield threatens to overturn the delicate balance of nature our legless comrades rely on." inveighed Charles Slatun, the group's putative leader. "We protested quite vocally when airlines began installing sound-dampeners on engines landing at the airport. But now, LAX as a nature preserve? This disregard for extant species must stop!" For months conservationists have been seen acting as informal greeters inside LAX as well as offering free taxi rides to the airport in an effort to convince the public that preserving LAX in its current form is in their best interest.
Who's been giving all that booze to the lizards?