Geckos are everywhere in Indonesia, including in your house. There are two kinds of house gecko: cicak (small ones, pronounced chichak) and tokek (big ones).
The cicak are territorial, numerous, and very bold; they like to hang out where there is an easy meal, and will sample any food you leave lying around unattended. We have some that lie in wait under the microwave, and more recently they have discovered that the toaster provides tasty crumbs that don’t need to be hunted down. Unfortunately this means there was an incident of toasted cicak today when I was making breakfast in a hurry and forgot to check inside. I heard the scrabbling inside too late, and it was all over for a poor cicak. Subsequently, I discovered it is a challenge to get a dead cicak out of a toaster.
Some other cicak misadventures have involved shutting one in a door and maiming one under a rocking chair (I put that one out of its misery). If they’re lucky they just lose the tail, like the one in the garbage bin that I accidentally dropped a banana peel on. I am waiting with trepidation for the time when I don’t notice one in the oven or the kettle.
Shyer and therefore less likely to be in trouble are tokek, which are much larger and only come into the house when it’s quiet. Luckily, they are also too big to fit inside appliances. I found one in the kitchen trying (unsuccessfully) to hide behind the curtains. I love that they have toe nails as well as grippy feet.
I caught the striped lizard in the album in the bathroom after it had been in there a couple of days. I think it couldn’t work out how to get out as they are supposed to live outside; he’s back in the garden. There’s a similar one living inside a garden lamp that bit Andy when he went to change the bulb – lucky they don’t have teeth!
Note from Andy: must remember it is tokek, not tetek, which means women’s breast in Bahasa Indonesia.[nggallery id=5]
