It’s all fun and games until the gecko eats the baby!
Living in Cambodia you get to love geckos: they eat mosquitoes, they are pretty cute and they make a cool sound that reminds you that your life is different. In fact, in our bedroom we have an accidental terrarium that I love. When they house was built at the top of each wall they built vents, areas for air to move in and out. When we took over the house we glassed these in so we could use the AC. The glass still lets out the light so at night bugs gather here and so do the geckos. It’s essentially an all you can eat buffet for geckos and we get some large gatherings sometimes. There are love affairs, fights, naps, in fact I often find myself ignoring the TV and instead watching the Gecko Soap Opera. Anyway, we had heard one particular gecko on our back balcony for a long time; he often made his chuck, chuck, chuck, ge-cko, ge-cko, sound while we were having drinks with guests. I had commented that he sounded big, but Brandon had laughed at me, saying it was just a gecko! Then one night, when Callie was about 3 months old I went in to check on her before bed. As I glanced around the room I saw a huge shape on the floor. Grabbing Callie I ran screaming from the room and into ours. Bursting in I screamed at Brandon that there was a crocodile in Callie’s room!
Brandon leapt out of bed and ran to see what I was talking about. His reaction might surprise you, most husbands would probably say I was imagining things and roll over, but you see the possibility of a crocodile in our house wasn’t as far fetched as it sounds because we lived next door to a crocodile farm. They raise them for meat and the skin in Cambodia, we actually have our own farm…but that’s another story). Anyway, though unlikely, it was not as improbable as in some of our past homes. Brandon rushed into Callie’s room and spotted the culprit, not a crocodile as it turns out, but rather our extremely large back balcony gecko. Turns out I had been right and it was big, huge in fact, the Godzilla of geckos! Brandon closed the door and headed off to fin reinforcements. My dad, who was visiting, was quickly drafted, and Brandon also rounded up our two nighttime security guards, Puan, a Cambodian kick boxer and tough guy and Samboon, who we affectionately referred to as Jungle Boy and could have weighed more than a buck ten with his clothes on. All four men (you are always a man when dealing with reptile or rodent issues) headed upstairs and opened the door to peek inside. The gecko still lay in the middle of the floor staring back at them. With a scream Puan turned and ran. Not just out of the room, but out of the room, down the stairs and out the front door, only stopping when he reached the end of our driveway and the main street. Having just lost his biggest “man” Brandon once again closes the door and goes to figure out why. Turns out Puan was deathly afraid of geckos and not even Brandon threatening his job could get him back into the house. Puan had thought he was being called upstairs for one of my regular spider or mouse requests, both of which he was happy to oblige, but a giant gecko was a whole other story. Down to three my dad, Samboon and Brandon went back in and cornered the beast before throwing a blanket over it before carrying it outside to freedom. I like to think that it was a bit Crocodile Hunteresque with Brandon holding the head down, my dad straddling the body and Samboon being whipped back and forth by a giant tail. They assure me that it was nothing like this, but I think they’re just being humble. The gecko was released in the back yard and we all went back to bed, but every now and then I still think I hear him and I keep the kids close!
Writers Note: Even gigantic geckos are not dangerous and no B&B guest has ever been harmed by one, we look forward to having you to stay =)… Read more »