The Lizards Have Come to Call

We live on a tropical island, so we are pretty intimate with the bug life here. As in, they sometimes invade our home. Like this morning when I was making bread. I ran my fingers down the cabinet door as I pulled out the honey and felt something weird. When I rolled what I thought was a piece of food or something similar off the edge of the door, I jumped when I realized it was actually this nasty gray cockroach-looking bug the size of my thumbnail. That sucker didn't have long to live as I pounded the daylights out of it. It took me awhile to get the feel of it off my fingers...

Because of all the bugs around, it's nice to see so many little lizards everywhere. (I'm guessing they are geckos or something similar, but I'm really not sure.) Sometimes, they even visit the house to hunt our buggy guests. Granted, I'd prefer they not end up dying inside somewhere, but I don't mind these guys too much. Here's one we found in the living room crawling through the magazine rack a few weeks ago:

I'd like to say something like, "I swear we keep the house cleaner than this dusty, hair strewn magazine rack", but I'd be lying.

Anyway, I did manage to chase this one back outside. There has been one or two we couldn't snag before they vanished, but since I have yet to find them again, I'm just going to assume they managed to crawl back outside.

The only time these guys made me jump was when we still lived in our first trailer. I had chased one up the wall, where it sat on the edge of our wedding picture are dared me to do something about it. I grabbed something to catch him in, then tapped the picture frame ever so slightly. Instead of running again, it leapt from the frame right onto the bridge of my nose. I yelped in surprise, but before I had a chance to do anything about it, it jumped back to the floor and against the wall. I then managed to herd it back outside.

Finally, there was this guy, who remained safely outside, yet thought our house might make a great jungle gym:

This is our kitchen window. I tried to get a picture that would show off his bright green color, one of the brightest lizards I've seen here yet, but I definitely don't have the camera for that. Also, the window is intensely dirty (unfortunately, it's the outside of the glass that is so foggy; it's too high for us to clean ourselves), so that made it even more impossible.

On an unrelated note, notice the fabulous caulking job on that window?  That sums up rather nicely the workmanship of most of the trailer repairs we've come across. Like the hole in the bathtub repaired with duct tape...