WOODBURY– Micah Maberry doesn’t just like lizards — he understands them.
While most students rush past the vet labs’ reptile tanks without a second glance, the Nonnewaug senior stops, studies, and somehow earns the trust of even the twitchiest reptile. His quiet bond with these scaly classmates raises a big question for our school: if you can connect with a lizard, what other surprising connections are we overlooking with the animals around us?
To some, they’re just class pets. To Maberry, they’re something more.
“Some people feel that lizards are weird, but so do I; that’s why I like them. I can relate, and weird is good,” Maberry said. “I just deal with it by not worrying because I’m firm in understanding who I am and my interests.”
Even people who don’t like reptiles can relate to that: the shock at first, then the slow shift when you actually look closer, and the way first impressions start to crack when you give them time. Maberry says that “looking closer” has changed how he sees nature in general.
“Lizards further taught me that the most common color in nature isn’t only in plants,” Maberry said, pointing out that the same greens and browns people love in forests also shimmer across lizards’ scales.
He’s not against more typical pets either, for him, lizards add another layer to the usual idea of what a so-called good pet looks like at home.
“I, personally, have a dog and I think I like lizards so much because my parents don’t,” Maberry admitted. “Not out of spite, but it was something new I learned about and lizards are just so unique, each in their own way.”
A lot of people’s fear of reptiles, he believes, comes from how they are shown on screens, not how they actually are in real life, especially when seeing them up close in a calm classroom instead of a dramatic movie scene.
“I feel most people think that lizards are scary, but that’s only because of how they are portrayed in the media,” Maberry explained. “Most lizards we see are huge and teeth-baring dinosaurs but in all reality, most modern-day lizards don’t even have teeth.”
Maberry’s perspective doesn’t turn everyone into a lizard lover, but it does something just as important: It makes people pause and rethink what they thought they knew. In a hallway full of quick judgments and rushed opinions, his quiet curiosity is a reminder that even the smallest, scaliest creatures deserve a second look.
