Animal Magic

Friday March 13th 2009

Keith: Nine observations about Singapore wildlife:

1. The small black stain at the foot of the wall in our living room wasn't a scuff mark from the movers, a dead insect or a random bit of dirt. It was lizard poop. Honestly. 

2. The perpetrator of said wall-soiling was Larry the Lizard, a three-inch long beige reptile that scuttled across the sitting room floor on our return from dinner one night. I guess we must have disturbed his daily ablutions. We chased him down the hallway but he was way too quick, disappearing into hiding somewhere in the vicinity of the spare bathroom. It's a bit freaky to have to share your home with a lizard, but we got used to the idea pretty quickly. In fact, I'd forgotten all about him until a small beige head peered round the bathroom door 30 minutes later and asked where we keep the spare toilet roll.

3. I was always under the impression that lizards carry salmonella, and that every so often a pet reptile's germs kill a baby. But when I asked my doctor about it he said this only applies to iguanas, and Larry was in fact as healthy as, well, Larry. Mind you, this was the same doctor who said I didn't need to wear mosquite repellant while dining outside in Singapore, which proved to be somewhat pisspoor advice last night (see #8).

4. The other three-inch creature attached to the kitchen window early on Tuesday morning was not, as I initially suspected, Larry patiently waiting for his turn in the bathroom. It was a giant grasshopper. It stayed on the window immobile for a couple of hours and then suddenly disappeared. I don't know who ate it, but a day later Larry had doubled in size, built himself a sandpit and seemed to be in serious training for the 2012 Olympics triple jump team.

5. Courtney shared an elevator with a cockroach on Wednesday. There really shouldn't have been any cause for alarm - it was traveling to the eighth floor and we live on the fifth. I don't want to be critical of my wife, but normal etiquette when someone joins you in an elevator is to ask what floor they want and press the appropriate button, not kick the crap out of them and boot them down the elevator shaft. Must be an East Coast thing.

6. According to my friend Nick, who's lived in Singapore and Thailand for over a decade, you shouldn't stamp on cockroaches. This spreads their eggs and the smell attracts their mate, and before you know it you're got the entire extended family and 300 hangers on camped out in your front room. A similar experience to getting Sarah Palin's daughter up the duff during an election campaign, I imagine. Anyway, best approach is to reason with them and politely ask them to leave, or nuke them with an aerosol. The cockroaches, that is - not the Palins.

7. Nick also informs me that Singapore is a safe haven compared to where he lives in Southern Thailand, where he has to contend with translucent venomous snakes, malaria-carrying mosquitos, flying cockroaches that bite on impact and a frog that blinds you if it pees on your face. I'm curious as to what circumstances would arise where you'd have a frog peeing on your face. I mean, sure, there was that girl I met in a dive bar in the East End of London fifteen years who suggested.... well, whatever.

 

8.  When you spot an insect on your arm at dinner, don't point at it and ask your wife 'Is that one of those dengue fever-carrying mosquitos?' Kill it before it bites you a second time, then describe what it looked like. You'll get the answer "No" whether she sees it dead or alive. After all, this is a woman who's lived with your Generalized Anxiety Disorder for seven years and knows there are certain buttons that are really best not pressed.

9. The presence of so much wildlife might suggest to the casual observer that the monthly fumigation carried out across our apartment complex is ineffective. Not so. While it's true that the sickly-smelling, thick poisonous smoke that swirled around the building on the first Tuesday of the month didn't eradicate Larry the Lizard and friends, it did a marvellous job fumigating my boxer shorts, which I'd inadvertently left drying on the balcony after our weekly wash. I'm pleased to report that there is now no life form of any description in my underpants - something that Courtney was able to vouch for only last night.