Another Life: Irish folklore insists on the hazard of the "mankeeper", a creature that will creep, or leap, down one's throat (while sleeping on one's back with one's mouth open, probably snoring loudly) and give birth to young in one's stomach, writes Michael Viney
The only cure is to take a meal of salty corned beef and then lean above a pond with one's mouth ajar, whereupon the whole tribe will depart across one's tongue in desperate search of a drink.
Yes, but is the mankeeper a lizard or a newt? Two totally different creatures - one reptile, the other amphibian - have long been confused by Irish countrydwellers, whose acquaintance with nature is often tentative, to say the least. Logic would seem to plump for the newt, which at least breeds in water, but mankeeper (manleaper is a variation) can be traced through Ulster-Scots to an original highland blend of the "maneater" (lizard) with the "mancreeper" (newt). "Pissed-as-a . . . " may also fit in here somewhere.
Now is the time when newts first come to notice in our ponds, as a shaft of sun catches the brilliant gold-and-black livery of the male in mating dress. And a first sighting of a lizard is also memorable for its otherness: even many Irish naturalists have never seen one. My own initiation was classic - Lacerta vivipara charging its batteries in spring sunshine on a limestone wall on Aran.
While this is the stereotypical image, an important habitat for lizards in Ireland is actually dry tussocks in the bogs: in Connemara, they feast on midges and their larvae from sea-level to the summits of the Bens, and on Tonduff Mountain, Co Wicklow, 13 lizards were seen in less than an hour one August afternoon.
How common is the "common" lizard? Ten years ago, the Irish Wildlife Trust carried out the first island-wide survey to augment the fieldwork of herpetologist Ferdia Marnell. Co Wexford returned by far the most sightings, followed by Co Wicklow, Co Cork, Co Donegal and Co Mayo. After the bogs, rural gardens were surprisingly productive, along with sand dunes and stone walls.
Two more popular national surveys, supported by the Heritage Council, were run by the Irish Wildlife Trust in 2004 and 2005 (and sightings continue to be welcome: see www.iwt.ie).
It's not exactly science, and the actual abundance of the lizard remains, as the IWT secretary Billy Flynn says, "enigmatic", but the three surveys brought more than 500 sightings from almost every Irish county and notably those on the coast. With sand dunes under constant pressure, bog and rough grassland are the top habitats.
But the substantial records from rural gardens (and even houses) suggest that "wild" settings are no means imperative (one recorder retrieved a lizard from her bath).
The results are being analysed by UCD lizard researchers Michael Fagan and Sean Curran, whose own fieldwork, scattering likely landscapes with dark-coloured, sun-absorbing carpet tiles, has persuaded lizards in Co Wicklow, Co Dublin and Co Kildare to creep into position for a census. Some of them have also supplied DNA for genetic studies. And the many excellent digital photographs of lizards, e-mailed with the survey sightings, have shown striking colour variations (including bright trimmings of blue and green), which may be significant for camouflage in particular habitats.
This is a breeding month, when many lizards may live together in the same grassy bank or dry-stone wall, the males fighting for mates and often leaving the females with multiple fathers for their eggs. They hang on to these until the end of July or later, then making a hole in some moist, dark place, deliver their young alive - between five and eight of them. They are tiny (about 4cm compared with about 13 cm for the average adult), but within hours are chasing their own small spiders and aphids.
A cool, unsettled May is a good time to go searching along the sides of paths: the lizards spend more of their time basking motionless in broken spells of sunshine to build up their energy. Good times of day are 8.30am to 11am and 4pm to 6pm. Walk slowly, look far ahead and keep the sun behind you.
I recently wrote about watching a tap-dancing herring gull ("foot-paddling", as it's called, to bring up worms and insects) on the lawn outside the Natural History Museum in Dublin's Merrion Square. Emmet Stagg, TD wrote to tell me that his Dáil office overlooks this spot and that he and his colleagues regularly watch this bird performing. They call him "Flatley".