#55: Wee Geckos at Home

After a long journey, living in airport lounges, planes, hotels, restaurants and rented cars, it’s good to return to the small things of home. Decades of touring has taught me (and those around me) that it takes a few days for my perspective to settle down from the motion aftereffect. It’s not so much culture shock, which is chronic, but the mere fact of having stopped moving. But this time, returning from tours of the US and UK, the process was helped along by the sight of a wee gecko scurrying across my office floor. Nothing like a loose reptile in the house to focus the attention.

Apparently Buenos Aires has a wee gecko problem. They’re everywhere. It must’ve come in via the balcony. But honestly, how big a problem could a wee gecko be? They’re harmless, cute, and helpful with insect control. Still, I’m trying to trap the little guy. He must miss his friends. And I’d like to return to sitting barefoot at the desk.

As it happens, I have some experience with the humane removal of wildlife from houses: tree frogs, large spiders, mice, birds, bats (I think that covers it). When we bought our place out in the Province, it was not, let’s say, hermetically sealed. It was a porous wreck. The windows were sieves. The area between the ceiling and the roof was a complex ecosystem whose study would’ve made for a solid grant proposal. The chimney was wide open. We were sitting ducks.

Pampa frogs (ranitas) are probably a separate species, but ours look exactly like nyctimantus rugiceps, the brown-eyed tree frog from further north. They come out en masse to announce summer storms with their chirping, clicking, and clinging like ghouls to the windows. When the kids were little we’d break into our own herpetological version of “Brown Eyed Girl” (one in a long line of unfunny dad jokes).

Inevitably, some of those tree frogs would squeeze through those wonky window frames. They’d take up positions around the house, usually near water, and a-froggy hunting we’d a-go. The children would shriek with delight. At least I think that was delight. Then came the trapping. Not so easy. Boy, can those things jump. But sooner or later we’d get our frog, enclosing it under an upside-down tupper (as any hard plastic container is called here) and a thin piece of cardboard slid between the lip and whatever surface the frog had landed on. With mock solemnity we’d carry it to freedom on the front lawn.

It wasn’t always fun and games. There was that time when shrieks of unalloyed horror, those of an elderly adult, could be heard emanating from behind the bathroom door, where no frog hunt should’ve been happening. With one sloosh of the bog, as they say in Glasgow, a house guest had found two—two!—brown-eyed tree frogs. The pair (until then undetected, mercifully) had launched themselves from bog to ceiling, sticking the landing. No one sang.

Out of respect for everyone involved—including you, dear reader—I’ll go into no more detail. However, as a result of that most regrettable incident, I developed a sure-fire technique for catching (in advance) frogs that have taken up residence in the bog. Nobody gets hurt, though the house guest never returns. It involves lowering the open end of a garbage bag over the toilet bowl, flushing, and then securing the frogs in the bag when they jump, straight vertically, into it. Twist the bag shut and head out to the front lawn. You’re welcome.

But back to Wee Gecko (who deserves personhood and proper name capitalization). The other day we startled each other out in open floor space. A tense standoff ensued. I’m ashamed to say that somewhere in there I considered flattening the poor creature with The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Volumes 3 and 4 (Epictetus to Logic), but thought better of it. First of all, how could I? Also, gross. And finally, K is for Kant. While I was standing there trying to decide if the moral duty to spare Wee Gecko’s life amounted to a hypothetical or a categorical imperative, the little guy scurried under the couch. Finally that philosophy degree proves good for something, if only indecision and delay. In any case, I was left holding the book and wondering what kind of person needs an 18th-century German idealist to tell him not to squash a poor gecko. Answer: one who’s been too long in the macro, flying too high, moving too fast, the apex predator up in his head, forgetting that he is also small and mortal and wanting mercy.

Touring involves a lot of scurrying: flying, driving to strange places, dragging baggage up stairs in hotels with no lift and a maze of little landings, narrow staircases, and surprise hallways, waking up under couches, the frantic search for morning coffee, more driving. And it all transpires under a wide-open sky and the analytical eyes of satellites, cameras, and radar guns. God only knows what all of those agencies, corporations and criminally well-funded armies are doing with the datapoints we generate. Apparently AI can write songs with one hand and decide to flatten whole neighborhoods with the other, all according to whatever parameters and margins of error you please, or are deemed expedient. There’s going to have to be more empathy between us wee geckos if we’re going to get through this.