A Gecko in the Bathroom

Just like most people, I prefer to shower alone, but since moving into our new house, it has not been just a matter of walking into the bathroom on my own.

Just a few days after we moved in, I found a large spider in the bathroom and began squealing like a little girl. Luckily my husband was home to rescue me.

Since that first spider, I always check the room before I undress.

Over the last few months, I have found two more large black hairy spiders, two small speedy spiders, and several bugs. They all got gently relocated except for the one that got away. One of the biggest ones disappeared into the shower frame and never reappeared.

It was bad enough knowing it was there, but then the other day I walked into the bathroom and found something else I didn’t expect or want.

A small grey gecko clung on to the sides of the bath, looking for all the world like a rubber parody of a gecko. Its little black eyes looked like little beads stuck onto its head and its light colourless skin looked stretchy and artificial.

Unluckily it ran much faster than a rubber toy. Luckily I have had lots of practice with a plastic bowl and paper lid. He got hunted down and turfed out after a few minutes of clumsy handwork with my plastic bowl, and a few more minutes of admiring him in his confined space.

If he had turned up a few months earlier, I might have been kinder and placed him gently under one of the bushes that edge our property. After visits from numerous spiders, ants, mosquitos, a snake, and a frog, I was not so patient. The poor thing got thrown from the balcony into the nearest plant, along with a lecture on the inadvisability of coming inside the house again.

I like geckos in principle and have one on my house entrance

but I don't really want them up close and personal.

I thought that was it, but there was another surprise in store.

I went into my office to do some work on my computer and a small insect landed on my desk.

It looked like an ant with wings. It turned out was an ant with wings, and, it was not alone. Looking up I saw its whole extended family swarming around the light bulb on the wall.

Thank goodness for fly spray. And thank goodness for vacuum cleaners and dustpans.

That is how I learned that when some ants want to move to a new nest, they grow wings and follow the queen as she searches for a new spot. I am grateful they were attracted to the light or I might not have found them until they had set up a new nest under my bed.

It might be time to give up the dream of an organic home and buy myself an industrial strength fly spray dispenser.