Friday, June 06, 2008

Pitter Patter of Very Little Feet

I'm delighted to announce that we've had some new members of our family join us!
Last night, cogitating on the throne in the bathroom I idly mused "gosh, that bit of dust looks like a tiny weeny lizard!" dust balls being both common and dynamic in my my house.
When lo! the tiny weeny lizard did move in a non-dustball manner and prove itself to be a newly hatched Gekkonidae! Woot! I watched it for a moment, with a feeling of amazement - where could it have come from? Do they miraculously emerge from tiles if the grout is really festy? But, no, there in the corner was a weeny little egg cracked open. It was fresh! But then I was all concern - it was wading through dust and a long way from anything a baby gecko might be able to eat or drink. From a viewpoint about 3mm off the ground my bathroom would seem an immense, arid landscape, devoid of life.
So I tried to pick the little guy up. Hi-larious. My giant sausage fingers were skyscrapers and it just scampered between cracks I couldn't see. Eventually he ran up my hands and I tried to cup firmly but gently around a body like a cobweb and hustled him out to the parsley. At least there in the nascent herb patch he has some chance of getting insects and water before his egg sac juices run out. I went back to look at the egg ... and there was his little sister - even smaller, even fainter, even harder to pick up! But after a brief fumbling debacle which I fear tired her out considerably, she too was relocated to the teeming Gecko Forest that was once a simple parsley plant. I went back to the bathroom and made a slow scan just in case any other hatchlings were looking for a herbivore to bond with.
I feel that in some small way I have been able to demostrate my grief over the accident that took the life of my work-gecko some unknown time ago. I discovered his/her little body about 2 weeks ago, pinned by the bulky transformer on the powerboard that sits on my desk. The body was dessicated and I felt terrible that I didn't even know when it had happened. I took the little corpse home in a tissue and buried it in the yard.

This afternoon I'm thinking of the new babies and hope they're enjoying discovering the world in the leafy green shade of the herbs, and most importantly, that they don't draw the attention of the cat.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Can't write anything, I'm laughing so hard. But- for christ's sake chick-get your a$# out of there. Being near family is great- but the rest of the place sounds like its breaking your heart. And its such a wonderful heart. Kate Kos.