Hemidactylus frenatus

What a perfect farce. Here I am, sweaty, sticky and stinking to high heaven, with an aircon room behind me and bathroom in front of me, and yet I cannot bathe, because there is a lizard behind the door of the toilet.

Yes, is it not totally hilarious, the way the Hemidactylus frenatus, known as the House Gecko, or just a normal lizard, such a tiny, ubiquitous little critter drives me to my knees, gut pulverizingly ugly as they are? From the beady black eyes, like caviar (black fish roe) bloated from inner decay, to skin the colour of bread mould, to the tapered bald tail, and worst of all that jerking side to side gait when they move, everything about the house lizard screams repugnant, nauseatingly hideous. I'm not sure of this innate loathing for the apparently friendly mosquito eating house pest, but it could stem from the baby black lizard that dropped onto my shoulder and crawled all the way down my arm when I was a kid. Once bitten, twice shy...or in this case, once scared, forever terrified.

Back, and I've never felt more like a fool armed with a bottle of fly insecticide and a rolled up wad of newspaper in each hand, standing outside the toilet, debating whether or not to whack outside the door - what if I chase the lizard further into the toilet? - or to spray it with the insecticide - what if the insecticide, which is not meant for lizards anyway, proves ineffective and the lizard is only partially inebriated? And what would I do if it fell down dead? What if it runs out towards me? - I'd get a heart attack and die. At the very least I'd get a seizure of gut busting proportions, and will end up on the floor with fresh blood spurting like free for all liquidated fireworks from my jugular.

Decided that to live with my dirty self for a night is way better than perishing in this unglamorous manner of death-by-lizard-scare. And anwyway, I bathe everyday, sometimes twice a day, so what's missing one bath in the long run? Bit of dirt never hurt anyone, it's in fact been proven to raise immunity and reduce allergies. Nothing like a childhood phobia to put things into perspective.