How I fell in love with the lizards

I am chasing him for the last ten minutes. He is a truant fella — strutting to the next room, merely escaping my grip and running off across the living room. He is waiting as if trying to gauge what his next move should be. I stop in the middle of the living room and scan across to see if there is any help.

“No one”, I shake my head. Seconds have just turned into a minute. I catch a breath and raise my hands to my hips. This little fella with freckled cheeks and wheatish skin is not going to escape I grin.

His round eyes flicker just a bit and then without any warning, he scurries off to the corner. I sigh. He is probably laughing watching me from the corner of his eyes. But, what he doesn’t know is that I don’t give up that easily. Actually, I never give up on these reptiles.

Lizards are not really anybody’s best friend. Of all the people I know, I don’t know of anyone who calls them ‘cute’. I grew up listening to many stories — murderous tales that involved these hapless creatures.

Naturally, we always were vary of these fellas when they scuttled on the roof above. We kept our distance, we shrank with “eeewww”, when we spotted one afar. When Sid, my son came along he loved every creature that creeped, crawled, scurried or even slithered on the planet.

He watched them with awe and asked many questions. When Sid was 12, we took him on a trip to Al Ain with the Dubai Natural History group. A young member took the kids aside and bent over a little creature and flickered a UV torch light above. The kids gasped and so did the adults when the neon green light glowed along the edges of the desert gecko.

That day, I began to see these creatures in a new light — quite literally. “Maybe they are not so bad”, I told myself, “but for that, I need a UV torch light” I chuckled. And so began a new phase of life with geckos being greeted with a smile rather than an “eww”.

Presently, the house gecko sits neatly in the corner behind the armchair and is impossible to reach. I have to wait for him to scamper into the open and hope he will not change his mind and take to the wall.

I keep my eyes on him when I see some movement from the corner of my eyes. “Get me the lizard cloth”, I signal to the teenager who walks into the room. My lizard cloth is a neon green square piece of fabric that I exclusively use to catch these fellas.

I grab the textile and hold it out in my palm. “It is a waiting game now”, I say aloud. He moves a bit and curls himself into an arc. Will he change the path I wonder briefly. Just as the thoughts cross my head, he moves his feet and heads straight towards me. I jump involuntarily and curse myself. My senses are alert.

My brain is drawing up maps of all the escape routes the gecko can take. “I hope it doesn’t get impossible”, I mutter under my breath. “All I have to do is to simply keep my eyes on him and act quick”, I nod.

Just as it dashes towards my feet, I turn around and pounce on him with my cloth. I miss him once. I am distracted by a slithering tail that he has left behind. “Not so fast mister”, I smile. I pounce again. This time, I have him in my hand nestled neatly inside the folds of my neon green lizard textile.

I look at him closely — he is soft, small and his tiny feet are gorgeous. I am strangely reminded of Doby the elf from Harry Potter. I take him out to the garden and hold out my lizard cloth. He jumps and stops just a bit before he scurries into the maze of plants and bushes. I let out a smile. I get back in to take out the little lizard tail and finally I shut the door.

Sometimes, all I need is a little gecko on the wall to give me endless hours of adventure. But, I still have to buy that UV torch light. I wonder how many more things I will fall in love with under new light.

Sudha Subramanian is an author and writer based in Dubai. Twitter: @sudhasubraman