After six weeks away from my Thai hut, the amount of lizard shit to be hosed away was substantial. No photos, forget that. I see a new quite large lizard is in male alpha residence, and he has a whole different set of habits than his predecessors. He’s a lurker. He has been lurking behind the bathroom curtain, and crapping onto that floor accordingly – for six weeks. A few more scrubs and sluices and I’ll be ready to enter that room with bare feet, but not now.

He’s not happy that I occasionally move that curtain. He relocated. Since then I’ve found him lurking behind various other things, and when accidentally uncovered, he looks a bit grumpy and slithers away to hide behind something else.

I haven’t heard him singing. He’s a quiet one, and wants his privacy. Definitely, unlike so many of his ilk, he’s not one to be in the open, for example hanging upside down from the ceiling, sleeping the day way, as so many do.

I’ve seen travelling salesmen asleep in their cars, in full view of anyone in the car park. Others cannot sleep in public, ever. This fellow is in the latter group. He’s a slow mover too. He reminds me of a very old grandpa who is content enough if you leave him alone in his shed. However once contact with fellows is forced upon him, he’s a bit grumpy, and eventually he will trudge away. You may as well leave him to his wittling or whatever the heck he is doing in there.

He’s not a chap, a bloke, or a guy, and certainly not a dude. He’s a Geezer.

Old Geezer, it seems, doesn’t like his toilet area cleaned.  This has never bothered any of my former tenants, and there have been many.  This system can be quite amenable to all concerned. Once I learn where their preferred dumping ground is located, I only need to lay down newspaper once a day, and everyone lives and craps in harmony.

However, the lizard brain is a brain of habit, and Old Geezer just couldn’t roll with the changes.  After six weeks’ worth of stool specimens were provided, and then sluiced away, absolutely nothing has appeared in its place.  In another area, in fact, other evidence has appeared that suggests Old Geezer may have left the building.  Maybe he dragged his slow-moving, grumpy fat self away somewhere, either to a new residence or in transcendence of his mortality.  In any case, there are no scat tracks of his shape to be seen.

The new lizard-in-residence is a skinnier, gawkier version altogether.  He’s long,  bendy and nervous or jumpy, and almost goofy. Then I heard him singing in a high fruity tenor much stronger than his lanky build would suggest.

It’s Gomer Pyle.

Two days pass in this new configuration.  Gomer splats on the bathroom floor in a different corner, directly onto the tile.  He doesn’t hang in the front porch, but rather out the back of the bathroom roof, singing his head off in that eye-popping way men have when they sing as high as they can go.

Surprise plot twist: Old Geezer is back.  He has relented and is using the newspaper.  He is hanging in a hole in the front porch roof. I can see his fat nose.  He’s lurking, he’s grumpy, but he’s back.

Maybe they are father and son?