The Gecko Incident

At this point, I'm used to my house serving as a sort of accidental menagerie. There are spiders in the corners, which I leave alone since they eat flies and mosquitos. Upon my return from a week in Bamenda, a bat swooped down from the ceiling and narrowly missed my head. And every once in a while a gecko manages sneak in (presumably through the holes in the roof), says hello, and tries to get a piece of that tasty insect action. They're not like the svelte green geckos I remember seeing in my father's Florida home; they look kind of chubby, with short thick tails like the little guy in the picture, who I found hanging out in my living room one evening.

Honestly, the various creatures don't bother me. A number of my volunteer friends have encountered mice or scorpions in their houses, so I don't complain about my harmless uninvited guests. (I'm still looking for a solution for the termites that are in the process of destroying my kitchen counter, however.)

That's not to say that it isn't startling sometimes. After waking up one day, I zombie-walked to my latrine, and as soon as I opened the door I heard the slap of something falling against the concrete floor. I looked down, now fully awake.

Not one, but two geckos had fallen from the ceiling, and now they weren't moving. Great, I thought. A gecko lovers' suicide pact in my bathroom first thing in the morning.

I sighed, and retrieved my broom from the kitchen. But immediately upon being touched, the two lizards sprang to life and wiggled off in different directions. One scurried up the wall and, I assume, back to its original hiding place. The other dashed across the floor... and into the latrine hole, followed by a small "plop."

RIP Gecko. I'm sorry I scared you to your death--one of the worst deaths I can imagine.

But that's not the incident to which the title of this post refers. Geckos that appear and quickly disappear I can handle. It's when they leave pieces of themselves behind as mementos when I get freaked out.

Shortly after the incident in the latrine, maybe two days later, I was sitting at the table eating scrambled eggs before the school day began. I heard another slap against the concrete floor. Ugh, this again, I thought. But this time I knew what to do. I grabbed the broom from the kitchen and tried to coax the gecko out the front door. Unfortunately, there's a sort of ledge in the doorjamb, and my reptilian visitor was apparently too frightened to climb up rather than across the floor. It was so frightened, in fact, that it dropped its tail.

I'll admit, I spent an inordinate amount of time watching Animal Planet as a child, so I was aware that certain species of lizards are capable of shedding their tails when they feel threatened. What they failed to mention on Animal Planet was that even when the tail is detached from the rest of the body, it continues to move. Quite vigorously.

It was one of those moments when I'm glad my neighbors don't speak English, as I involuntarily shouted a profuse string of swear words.

Once I had gathered my wits, I had the presence of mind to scoop the tail-less gecko up with a dustpan and throw it out the front door, followed by the tail itself. Even in the red dusty dirt of my front yard, I could see the tail continue to twitch and wriggle.

Since then, on the few occasions when I've found a gecko in my house, I just tell myself, "live and let live," and walk away.