Sorry about your tail, dude

Nothing makes me make that weird screaming sound more than cockroaches and geckos. Both of them like to appear in odd places, and when they realize you've discovered them will scurry away with lightning speed.

I've thankfully encountered the geckos much more frequently these past few days. There are at least two, maybe three, who have taken up residence in my kitchen cupboards. Several times now I've opened a cupboard to find one of them hanging on the inside of the door. They always greet me with a guilty look, like I just caught them stealing, or maybe pooping in my cupboard. If I've opened the door quickly, they run. But sometimes we just have a stare down (cue the western show down theme music).

Yesterday I caught one little guy who seemed paralyzed with fear. I decided I might have the opportunity to nab him and take him to a more appropriate nest, somewhere far far away from my food pantry. I grabbed a large rubbermaid container and the cover. Because I have terrible aim, and I was creeped out of my wits, I missed him. But not entirely. No, to my children's delight, I managed to nab his tail. As he ran for safer ground, he dropped his tail behind as a twitching gift for me in my rubbermaid.

This is how I know I have more than one gecko in my cupboard - I've seen another one since then with a full tail. I don't know how quickly their tails grow back, but it can't be within a day. What's more interesting to me is pondering how geckos feel when they lose a tail. Is is just like, "Aw man! Not again!" or maybe "Oh well - better my tail than me!" or, I fear, "Until my dying day, I swear I will not sleep until I have taken revenge upon the giant screaming creature who made me drop my tail!"

What I do know is that I am really tired of screaming each time I go in my kitchen.