Gušterice (Kuscarice)

Many things changed from when we were growing up on the coast of Croatia, however, there are things that endure and one of them is the presence of gušterice (pronounced like goo-shter-its-eh). These are our local lizard friends, small gecko like lizards that look like the one from thoseinsurance commercials. There are plenty of them around and you can see them constantly scouting, looking for their next meal or running to hide from predators. If you hear a rustling sound in the grass or in the garden it is most likely a gušterica.

They clean up bugs and annoy the crickets. They’ll even eat the crickets if they’re big enough. Gusterice are a mystery for the tourist, a subject of many travel pictures. They are a part of the landscape as much as the seas and the flowers, and it is quite common to observe them on one of their missions. It is perfectly acceptable to stop a conversation with a comment about a passing gušterica. For those of us that grew up here, interacting with gusterice brings back memories.

Photo courtesy http://kinmare.blogspot.com/2016/09/

remember when my father would be preparing the garden in the spring he would occasionally find gušterice eggs underground, around 10-12 or so of them.  He would carefully leave them buried so as not to disturb them. These would produce young ones by  the summer if left alone. Part of our culture was respecting what was around us, and the adults appreciated how the little guys kept down the pests.  

As for us kids, catching gušterice was one of the things that we did, especially the boys, however, I remember catching them with my cousins and brothers plenty of times. We would make a lasso from the local grasses and try our luck. We would find them while they were sunning themselves and then we would take the little ring of grass and try to catch her around the neck, from behind. They were too fast to get from the front.

“If someone is always lying in the sun, you might say they’re like a gušterica!”

Once you caught one, it was placed in a jar to give you proof of your success. There was a  certain bravery in this task. If by chance you caught one of these by their tail they would leave their tail behind. No problem for the little lizard because, they would grow a new one, but for the hunter it was an embarrassment. They tail would move in a circle spiraling around and around until a local bird came down and picked up the tail. We would say that the tail was cursing us while it moved like that.

Photo courtesy http://www.slobodnadalmacija.hr/scena/mozaik/clanak/id/4825/u-lastovskom-arhipelagu-od-1971-nastupila-ekstremna-evolucija

One of my brothers would take our cat in summer afternoon and slowly inspect the rocks for gušterice sunning themselves in the afternoon heat. They worked as a team. The catch was shared between the cat and the chickens. There were always so many of them back then, so I am pretty sure this was just another way of keeping the ecosystem healthy. At present, gušterice are protected because their numbers are now too low. It is a sign of the times. The topography  has changed because the land is not cultivated as it used to be, so the numbers of gušterice are lower. It would be very sad to be home and not to see a gusterica on the rocks or to hear one scurrying in the grass. We have to help to keep them around, so if you see their eggs, let them be. And if you see them in the sun, take a picture but don’t disturb them.