The Lizards of Odd

The night crawlers bite

Many interesting and exotic animals inhabit Southeast Asia (SEA). Geckos are one of these creatures. But saying that they are interesting is an understatement. Most Geckos in the rest of the World are afraid of human contact and are not know to attack.

Then there is the Tokay Gecko. Dark scales on the top side, beige belly, awesome suction cups on the feet, able to crawl on walls and ceilings, can grow to be 12″ to 18″ long, nocturnal hunter, a mouth full of sharp teeth that have tons of bacteria, a ratchet jaw like a Pit Bull dog, and the gumption to attack humans. During the mating season, the males would make a loud eerie call at night, sounding like “Ettt ohhhh”. They were probably named after the call, since it sounded a lot like Ge-Ko. Sometimes the males would wind up their voice like an opera singer, before making the actual call. It sounded like a car engine turning over and over and not starting. When they did the calls frequently at night, I would shake in my bed with fear, knowing they were out there, waiting for some unsuspecting prey.

My Dad learned first hand how vicious Tokay Geckos could be. One night at the second house in Laos, my Dad was walking around the house outside in the courtyard, and he just happen to be carrying the old trusty equalizer, a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. As he neared the side of the house, a large adult Gecko leaped off the roof and onto his shoulder, attempting to bite him. He violently knocked the Gecko to the ground and proceeded to pulverize it. When he was done, he told my brother and me about the attack, and led us outside with a flashlight. All we could see in the bushes was this tiny mound of red flesh that did not look like a Gecko; it looked more like something that went through a blender.

My Mom learned the hard way also. One day my brother and I came home from school (K6) and found a mid sized Gecko on the front door. My Mom came out the door with a broom, saw the Gecko, and freaked out. She hit the Gecko rapidly, which was most people’s reaction to Geckos. Their legend preceded them. Again the same result, which was a smashed Gecko.

Of course I had my lessons too. At the second house, a two-story water tower was next to the main house. A narrow walk way separated the water tower and the house. The water tower had been converted into small rooms, one on each floor. The room on the second floor had a cool view over the wall of the courtyard and into the neighbors, a Laotian General and his family. When the French inhabited SEA, they build many of the first Western traditional buildings that the Asians had ever seen. Since water pressure was a problem, the French built water towers next to the house and used gravity to feed the pipes. The windows to our water tower had big heavy wood shutters. I considered the water tower my “tree house”. I would climb the stairs and play in the second story room. The other window of that room looked down on the narrow walk way. It was an excellent lookout post for spying on my brother or the servants. One day I was peering out the window of the water tower on the house side, and suddenly I got his strange feeling like I was being watched. I leaned back and looked in-between the open shutter and the outside wall of the water tower. A large adult Gecko was staring me in the face, just inches away from my face. The next thing I remember was my foot hitting the bottom step of the stairs on the way down. I must have flown the rest of the way down. When my feet hit the ground, I was inside the house in a nanosecond. At least it seemed so. I then regaled my family of my brush with death. And I lost interest in the water tower after that incident. Imagine that.

The most traumatic Gecko contact that my family had was at the first house. The French colonial houses from the 1950’s had the kitchen, garage, and servant’s quarters separate from the main house. They were connected by a screened, covered, breezeway. The most direct route to the kitchen was through the breezeway and it had a lot of traffic. A very large adult Gecko decided to take up residence in our attic, near where the breezeway connected to the back of the house. At night he would make his calls and then crawl down a pane of glass, in that small gap between the house and the breezeway. He had a perfect hunting perch. He was directly overhead of anyone walking into the breezeway and going to the kitchen. But he had plans of eating one of us. His belly was so beige, pressed upon the glass, waiting for something to kill. Every night for about two weeks he was at his perch about our dinnertime. He had done his reconnaissance and knew when we traveled the most down the breezeway. Our family and the servants were freaking out. We were being systematically being hunted by this predator. And we were dinner. My Dad finally had enough of this running down the breezeway to avoid being attacked.  One night he came home from the office and announced to everyone that he had the ultimate solution for Mr. Gecko. That evening at dinnertime when the Gecko perched himself on the glass, my Dad retrieved an interesting weapon from his bag. It looked like at long sleek pellet gun, but it looked like no gun I had ever seen. He quietly snuck up on Mr. Gecko and fired one round into his head at point blank range, with the gun making very little sound. Mr. Gecko retreated and was never seen or heard from again. Years later when Senator Church was investigating the Agency for suspected abuses of their power, he discovered some interesting “toys” that the Agency had make. One of them was shown in the newspapers, with Mr. Church holding it up. When I saw the picture, I said bingo, that was the gun I saw my Father using on the Gecko. TSD used the dart gun to knock out guard dogs. But some people suspected that it was also used for shooting chemical pellets into someone. Some debate about this dual use continues to this day.

This entry was posted on December 22, 2006 at 1:47 am and is filed under Laos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.