Your friend the gecko

When I went to Belize in 2006 I stayed with a friend of a friend in Belize City. I remember getting freaked out when I saw something streak across the wall out of the corner of my eye. At least I thought I did. It was gone. But there it was! It was a lizard! In my room! I asked Monique about it. She just laughed. Geckos, as it turns out, are more common than houseflies.

If you travel in tropical regions you will see geckos everywhere. Walls, ceilings, but rarely floors, strangely enough. They're small enough to get into just about anything. In that regard they're like mice. One of the many joys of living in Baltimore -- did my sarcasm come through? -- was the constant battle against mice. And rats. You would see the telltale pellets and then go to Home Depot to buy more traps, poison, etc.

When I moved into my apartment in Phnom Penh I noticed pellets. I thought, Oh no, here we go again. Then I noticed pellets on the wall... I realized I didn't have mice, I had geckos. I'm ok with that.



Geckos don't make noise, which is nice, but they eat bugs, which is great! There is another type of lizard. I don't know what it's called in English, but it looks like a giant gecko. Maybe it is a giant gecko. They're several inches long and they do make noise. The sound is somewhere between a honk and the sound a frog makes.

Big geckos are bad, though, because they eat little geckos. The worst gecko, of course, is the one in the Geico commercials. Why does an ad for an American insurance company speak with an Australian accent?