Lizard Tales

The ordinary house lizard (or common house gecko) is regarded as a benign, unassuming creature. Quietly scurrying along ceilings and walls, the butiki's presence is more actively felt when the staccato clicking sound is heard: "tik-tik-tik".

The butiki is quite a common fixture in Filipino homes, so much so that they are not really noticed anymore.

When I was about five years old I had a toy with little chickens and teeny-tiny little eggs which I was fond of playing with. One day I chanced upon a round white sphere in our living room, and so I picked it up with my little hands. Not very carefully, I may add, since I was quite certain this was one of my teeny-tiny little eggs.

I must have pressed a bit too vigorously though, since the next thing I knew, out jumped a teeny-tiny little baby lizard. I shrieked with surprise and not a bit of fright.

I can imagine now, with the benefit of non-lizard-egg-crushing hindsight, that I must have surprised the heck out of that poor baby lizard, and prematurely let it out of its protective shell. I wonder how it fared afterwards.

Fast-forward to the present.

Our little toddler is fascinated by anything that moves. Birds, butterflies, cats, dogs, ants. And yes, her interest also extends to lizards. A few weeks ago, she was looking at one particularly large specimen as it was moving along our bedroom ceiling. She was all wide-eyed with watching, so engrossed, that she was craning her head upwards while her rosebud of a mouth formed an "O" of wonderment.

Then the lizard decided to let go of the ceiling and let gravity take its course.

She was so startled that she screamed a little bit. It didn't help that I uttered a little shriek of surprise when this happened. The same shriek I made when I was five. I hope I didn't traumatize our toddler.

I think that the lizard may have also been confused by all the shrieking, that it in very short order it had crossed the floor trying to find a place to hide from the noisy gigantic creatures it was faced with. Unfortunately, it decided that the shortest way to safety was to cut through a path that would take it over the toddler's feet.

Luckily she was wearing socks that time. She screamed a bit more, hopped frantically to one side, and ran towards us. No harm done.

It was only a few days ago that I gleaned from her toddler lingo that she believed something more monumental had occurred than a lizard simply running over her foot.

"Mama, lizard, bite foot. Lizard, bite foot."

I reassured her that this did not in fact happen, that it only passed over her stockinged feet.

I hope that she believed me.

And I hope that one day, when her own toddler has a lizard encounter of her own, that she does not add her own shrieks of surprise to the hullabaloo.