Leaping
Lizards and Gripping Geckos
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Lizards startle me. Back in the long-ago
days when I rode horseback to check cows, now and then I’d see a flash of
movement when a lizard sunning itself on a rock was equally startled by me. My
mouth emitted a screech without my permission and my heart swung into
overdrive. I couldn’t help myself. Meanwhile the lizard disappeared behind,
around or under the lichen encrusted rock, a perfect habitat for its lichen
colored skin.
Fortunately, there aren’t a lot of lizards in eastern
Montana. More fortunately, my horse was smarter than me and had become used to
my ways. Otherwise I surely would have been dumped into the prickly pear. To snakes I reacted even more loudly but my
horse simply flicked back his ears and carried on.
Even harmless salamanders gave me
the heebie-jeebies. When I was young, a trip down into the dirt cellar beneath
the kitchen for a quart of pickles was an exercise in courage. No, that’s wrong.
It was an exercise in fear.
It is a surprise to me that I’ve
become quite fond of iguanas, not the most handsome of beasts. But you know how
we women are; we can become used to anything.
There had to be geckos in my
apartment. Clues were there for me to read. I moved to this place in November.
It is hardly airtight. When I opened the door to come in or go out, often a fly
or mosquito from outside would, uninvited, flit through. I might spot the
insect once or twice and then it would disappear. And I never swept its little
carcass off the floor. So where did it go?
Geckos have a distinctive chirp when
calling to one another. I hear them every day. Chirp-chirp-chirp-chirp. I
scanned the walls. Searched the corners. Looked behind dressers, into the dark
places. I never saw a gecko. Week after week. Month after month. Nada. Nothing.
Despite my distaste for lizards, I
like geckos. I recognize their service to humanity. Anything that eats
mosquitoes is a friend of mine. Bats, swallows, geckos. Bring them on.
Now I must explain that mosquitoes
here are wimpy. Days go by and I never see one of the little pests. Compared to
the mosquitoes-on-steroids we breed in the Milk River Valley, the variety here is
the 98 pound weakling. We sneeringly kick sand in its face. However, small and
seemingly harmless, it carries dengue fever, which is nothing to sneer at. So
bring on the mosquito eaters, I say.
Sunday, near evening, I was sitting
at my dining table eating pitayas, the fruit of cactus, of which I’ve grown
quite fond, when a pale green gecko skittered up the wall and darted behind a
painting. “Samantha,” I said, “I knew you were here.”
Silently I thanked her for keeping
the bug population down. I was nearly giddy with excitement. Monday night I was
propped on my mound of pillows, reading before lights out, when across the room
a light tan gecko popped from behind the dresser and raced up the wall and with
gripping huge foot pads, cut across the ceiling at Interstate speed. I promptly
named it “Sam-I-Am.”
Isn’t this strange. Two geckos in
two nights.
Tuesday night I went to the kitchen to refill my water glass
and a smaller pale green gecko dashed across the floor in front of me.
“Samish.”
Wednesday night, a darker brown gecko made tracks across the
living room wall. “Son-of-Sam.” Is there a pattern here?
My theory is that gecko spotting is much like deer hunting. In
my first hunts along the coulees, I never saw a deer. My husband would see
twenty. Gradually I learned their habits. I learned to watch my horse’s ears;
to watch where he put his attention. It seemed as if I imagined the outline of
a deer and the deer would walk into that outline becoming visible. Same
technique with geckos.
I have a great “Hands-Across-the-Border business idea—to export
geckos to the Milk River Valley.
Customers will line up to buy my little mosquito eaters. Each gecko will
come with a name and pedigree, like Beanie Babies. Geckos will become a national
craze. They are the perfect pet, quiet, nocturnal, unobtrusive. They don’t
climb on furniture. The shed their skin but then they eat it, cleaning up their
own mess. Wintering might be a challenge, but, small problem, easily solved. We’ll
sell them in colors, stripes or speckles. We will employee hundreds of people.
Already my friend Kathy and my daughter Dee Dee want a piece
of the action. Geckos-R-Us.
Sondra
Ashton
HDN: Looking
out my back door
May 29, 2014
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