Goodbye Walden.

Two moderately-sized geckos used to live in my shower. I named the smaller one Walden, and the bigger one, Pond. For a few days, Walden had stayed in the exact same place on my bathroom floor, not moving at all even when I walked in or out. Being in denial, I figured that we were at last friends and his not moving meant that he was not scared of me anymore. After about three days, I came to terms and decided that he must be dead.

Now came the hard part: removing the body of the dead gecko into the trash bag. After living in the village north of Chiang Mai when I was a student here, my tolerance of abnormally large bugs/spiders/creepy things has gone significantly up, but I wasn't thrilled at the prospect of touching Walden's slimy little body.

Finally, I tried to remove him by sliding a piece of paper under his body and lifting him into the trash bag. I won't go into detail, but it was difficult and a little frightening. I was terrified that as soon as I got close, Walden would spring back to life and jump in my face. He didn't, and at last the process was over. I felt a little sad for about two minutes, and then looked for the other gecko, Pond, to see if he was still alive. I haven't found him yet... oh dear.