Informal update
I was standing with at least two other people in a garden. There was a big, three-foot long lizard sunning itself. It had six legs, two pair near the front and one at the end of its torso, where you’d expect it, before the short tail. This guy was explaining to me that the lizard generally left people alone, unless you provoked it - but once you provoked it, it would never leave you alone. I said Oh yeah? And grabbed the lizard around its upper body, between the two front pairs of legs. It immediately went nuts, twisting its neck around, trying to bite my arms, hissing and spitting and growling. Keeping it under control and its jaws well away from my body was exhausting work. Finally I was able to throw the lizard a goodly distance away, but as soon as it hit the ground it came at me again, and I had to grab it around the body in the same place to prevent it from chomping on me, and again we wrestled intensely for minutes before I flung it away. This time it sat on the ground where it landed, panting, resting, but within a minute it leapt at me again, and again we wrestled. This repeated itself over and over and over again, until finally I woke up.