Cincinnati’s streets are teeming with thousands of small, scaly residents—common wall lizards, also known as Lazarus lizards.

George Rau Jr. brought 10 Wall Lizards from Lake Garda, Italy, to Cincinnati in 1951, and 70 years later, the city has an ever-growing population Charna Flam is a writer-reporter at PEOPLE.

Unlike some other lizards, the tegu rarely climbs more than a few feet off the ground, but they are strong swimmers. From late fall and through the winter months, tegus head into burrows for a ...

For more than 70 years, thousands of common wall lizards, known as Lazarus lizards, have scurried across sidewalks and lurked in your garden. They're all over Cincinnati, but the reptiles aren't ...