"Wait a minute," he said. "I have to show you something. You'll love this. You'll absolutely love it." He darted over to a nearby shelf and retrieved from it a white plastic bucket with a lid on it. The lid had several holes punched through it. Professor Wake took off the lid and allowed me to peek. "What the...?" I sputtered in confusion as I stared into the bucket. At the bottom was some sort of extraordinary, lizard-shaped doll, but unlike anything I'd seen at a zoo gift shop, Toys "R" Us, or even the Blarney Stone cocktail lounge near Penn Station. Its five-inch-long body was light and shimmering, like semitransparent flan, and obviously molded from an advanced gel-solid polymer. Its head was tinted teal, its dainty legs and the tip of its nose bore a hint of Necco pink, and its back and fat tail were sprinkled with patches of copper and lilac. I couldn't stop gawking. Was it a replica of an ancient reptile, driven extinct by its insupportable distribution of pastels? Was it a kind of visual pun, created by an artistically gifted scientist as wry commentary on the entire field of herpetology?
