Paget's Belize Journal

The Preliminary Trip - It Begins - First days - A tourist trip - Flying, sand crabs - San Pedro 1 - San Pedro 2 - Braids, snakes, dogs - Leaving Dangriga The Actual Stay - Help for library - Books; departure - Arrival; weather - Sensations, housing - Security, more housing - More security, snorkeling - Dock activities - Day-to-day life 1 - Day-to-day life 2 - The Quadrille - The apartment! - Cleaning and culture - Hurricane Irene - Too much reality - Hopkins Village 1 - Hopkins Village 2 - Weather - Minimum wage - Transportation - Food Experiments - The Brits; furniture - Meeting and greeting - Night noise, Settlement Day - Dragonflies! - More noise - A good 19th - Wrapping up the 19th - Traveling to Mexico - Thanksgiving in Mexico - Cockscomb Basin - A Belizean week-end - Tobacco Caye - Is it really Christmas? - This is the life - Christmas wishes - Headwear - Christmas Experiences - Lottery - Caye Caulker haircut - Caye Caulker 2 - Geckos - Red Bank - The last few days		Jan 14, 00 Geckos I know I promised to write about cultural stuff, but I also wanted to fill you in on some of the characteristics of geckos, those lizard heroes who eat cockroaches and chirp me to sleep. I have quite a few around now and they seem to be used to me. Often if I wake up at night, there's a nice sized one sitting on the window screen above my head, always in the same place and I'm pretty sure it's the same one. My guardian gecko? The other morning I shuffled into the bathroom to brush my teeth and there was a tiny one sitting in the sink looking at me. Scared the hell out of both of us. It's important to understand that these geckos are chameleons, i.e., they change colors depending on what background they're resting on. So Laura speaks of them as "those pinkish lizards," but at my house, they're whitish. I have to say they're prettier at her place. They seem to be born with this camouflage ability because even the tiniest ones -- no bigger than a skinny, leggy cricket ­ are rarely caught in a contrasting color. As you have surmised, my walls are white. And my underwear is mostly black. This is relevant to the story. For some reason, the babies are attracted to damp laundry. So when I do my hand-washing and hang it on my little plastic Chinese carousel with the built-in clothes pins, they like to sit in among the underwear. If I forget and give the carousel a little twirl, sometimes the baby geckos get surprised. And then I have little slate gray lizards scrambling madly up the walls toward the fuse box (a favorite hiding place) paling as they go. Well, this is a slight exaggeration. The highest number I've ever surprised in my underwear is two. If you were wondering, they don't chirp as they scramble. They're very focused and very silent. If they think (?!) you see them, though, they flatten out and play dead. This does NOT seem like a very good survival trait, since the slowest predator would likely find them in the 3 or 4 minutes that it takes them to turn (imperfectly) into a wall. Possibly this works better in the jungle. It's the weekend again, my last here and the Red Bank trip. Wish me luck with the Scarlet Macaws. Next