My fence is trapping lizards. :(

We recently put up an 18" barrier fence of 1/2" plastic hardware cloth to use in conjunction with electric fence wiring. It's been great to not have squirrels or anything else eating the garden any more, but yesterday I was behind one of my boxes, where I don't usually go, and found the body of a lizard who had gotten stuck wriggling through the fencing and died. I just left him there; he was stuck pretty good (his hind legs wouldn't go through) and removing him might have been... messy.

This morning during my regular morning garden check I found another little guy stuck in the fence, this time still alive. He had rubbed off most of the scales around his "hips", having gotten stuck the same way the other one did (hind legs). I got wire snippers and with the help of my SO, we freed him. He immediately scurried away, went through the fence again and got stuck. We freed him again, and this time we didn't let him get away; he was relocated to the yard next door.

I'm not sure how to prevent this from happening. It sucks, because I really like lizards and appreciate their bug-eating help!

i had the same thing last month, as we use hardware cloth as covers for our beds. I think the younger ones have all grown bigger now, and don't fit in the holes anymore, but it is sad to see 'em ;/ Hopefully, yours will all get bigger and not even try..

Have they been getting stuck in the lower portion of the fence? If so, you could wrap a smaller gauge fence over the larger holes.

I'm tempted to put some 1/2" PVC here and there for them to use as passthroughs (I don't think they'd get stuck in that?) but worry that mice would use them, too. Can mice go through 1/2" PVC do you think?

camprn wrote:Have they been getting stuck in the lower portion of the fence? If so, you could wrap a smaller gauge fence over the larger holes.

Yes, it's the lower part of the fence. I have a lot of spare gutter guard and might attach that to the lower part with cable ties. It's a LOT of fence, but if it saves the little guys that would be great. I do like them in the garden, but I'm not sure how I could let them in without letting in other things we don't want!

Mice can go through any hole the size of a dime. That would be the adult so the babies could go through something smaller.

mice would go through, and I'm not sure a lizard would "figure out" to go to where the pvc pipe is?

The hardware cloth goes right to the ground right now and is held down at the bottom with landscape staples so it doesn't shift. It's on top of weed block so the grass doesn't come up and short it out. I plan to put paverstones or bricks all around the outside of it, both to keep the grass down and to sort of force any invading critters into touching the electric wires. The inside of the garden is already mulched a couple of inches high. Maybe if I heap it up against the fence on the inside, the lizards won't climb up high enough to go through... nah, who am I kidding, they climb EVERYTHING. I guess I'll have to make frequent lizard checks and if they keep coming, I'll add gutter guard (but I think they'll just climb higher). It's too bad, I really don't want them to die!