Gecko Pop-Tart
I have occasionally bemoaned the fact that I am the housekeeper in a large apartment that has both white tile floors and geckos. Geckos are harmless, slightly squishy little reptiles that lay their eggs in unobtrusive corners and eat insects in the house. (Hooray! Despite our best efforts and the weekly thermal fogging, there are always some insects in the house, and they tend to either bite people or get into the human food.) They have big, bulging eyes and padded toes that let them walk on walls and ceilings. Sometimes you can catch them and send them outside, but this is a largely futile pursuit. The cracks between doors or windows and the walls are big enough for the little guys to slip through.
So you soon learn to live with geckos, even though this means that you go around scrubbing their black excrement from the white tile floors, white walls, and yes, even the white ceilings – I am not sure how they manage to poop upwards and make it stick to the ceiling while they’re up there, but they do. Truly Nature is wondrous.
So I’m not really surprised when I come into the kitchen early in the morning and hear a rustling sound in the trash can. The geckoes are foraging in there, and when I turn on the lights they skedaddle. Or when I go to put away the dishes from the drainer, and something with a tail skitters away from me as fast as it can, and climbs the wall to safety on top of the cupboards. I can’t say I regard this as a cheerful morning greeting (before coffee, nothing is a cheerful morning greeting), but these things don’t startle me.
But I do jump when a gecko leaps from the top of the cupboards onto my hair. A soft little bounce over my left ear, and then the little guy falls squashily to the floor below, landing on his feet, and takes off for parts unknown.
And yesterday I was most surprised at the kitchen counter, when I was making toast. Unwrap the bread, fine. Take out two slices and put them in the toaster, well and good. Depress the toaster ignition button, and out flies a shocked and horrified gecko, leaping clear from the toaster cavity by a few inches, landing on the counter and lighting out for the territories. He’d been peacefully napping or nibbling bread crumbs in the bottom of the toaster, probably hidden himself well out of reach when he saw the bread slices coming, and then was shocked – shocked! – by the wires around him heating up.
I’m just glad he didn’t leave his tail behind. The toast tasted fine, BTW – no hint of roast reptile to upset even the most delicate gourmand.