Guest Post from My Dad

In the interest of keeping my typing wordcount up for NaNoWriMo (ha, ha.  I'm so behind it's pathetic), today's post is going to be a guest post.


For those that don't know - which is pretty much everyone - my dad lives over in Thailand.

Why does he live over in Thailand?


Well, to be honest, after reading his emails over the past couple of years, I'm not really sure.


At any rate, here are some of the funnier excerpts about life in Thailand.  Oh, and for reference, here is  a Tokay lizard (it's actually a gecko):

He refers to them, so I thought you might want to see what they look like.





And here is what they sound like:












The Tokay geckos live in the wall and during mating season they make that noise from 10pm to 2am.


And now onto his emails:


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I was doing my nightly flashlight-in-hand-careful-of-snakes search of the eaves of the house for Tokay lizards.  I found some small white globes under the eave next to the front porch......eggs.

I got a long stick and broke two of the three, but the last was hard to get to. While going after number three the mama lizard showed up. Of course I poked her with the pointed stick to either kill her or get her to move. She came out of the eave and came toward me, so I slapped at her over my right shoulder while doing the macho thing of dropping the stick and running to the other side of the porch.

I'm glad I was alone. (<--Becky in:  BWAHAHAHAHA.  But now it's on the Internet!)

I eventually replaced the stick in my manly hand and got close enough to pop the egg.


The next day a Karin guy came by and I asked him about getting rid of the mama lizard. He did what all of the Thais do - shrug their shoulders and say, "Let them stay, they are good luck."

Well, I don't need several two pound good luck lizards running up the kitchen wall when I turn on the light or lurking in the bathroom when I go there at night,  so "live and let live" to me has become "live somewhere else or die".


Over here, in addition to a regular fishing pole with a rod and reel, you can buy a "fishing pole" that looks like a wooden rifle, but with just the wooden part. On this there is a very large rubber band and a six inch long piece of sharpened metal that you can attach string to - it's kind of like a cross bow for shooting fish.

Are you getting the picture yet? Can you envision Hunter Dad lurking the eaves of his domain with his tokay killing crossbow in hand?

YES!

.....Except they cost around $21 and I only have one lizard left.... so to make a long story short I have a six foot piece of metal with two of the before-mentioned projectiles welded to the end for stabbing.  Hey,  it beats a pointed stick. Oh yeah, I found out that if the lizard is nesting it will attack and can jump up to three feet. They are nicknamed the bulldog lizard because when they bite they don't let go.


So last night I went outside and looked several times for my adversary, but she not there....Anyway that is why I am late wishing you a happy birthday,  I didn't forget, I was just trying to fight my way through blood-thirsty lizards to reach the keyboard. Hope you have a good birthday and I'll see you when I can.




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You asked about how life here is going? Well, it is all bugs, beer and lizards right now.


 Bugs: All kinds all shapes and colors. They have bugs so small they can fit through the screens in the windows.  I  believe these are the ones that bite the ankles, all the time.  There is a bug repellent that works but you can't put it on all of the time. The next best thing is a fan - the circulating air keeps them away. My morning ritual is to get up, turn the computer on and make coffee as fast as possible. The reason for this is the "ankle biters " are hungry in the morning and they attack. I sit at the computer, but before I do I turn the fan on and aim it towards my feet to keep them away.


 Beer:  What can I say? It relieves the boredom.  I don't sit around and drink beer all of the time, but once or sometimes twice a week we will go into town (30 kilometers round trip) and see what the tourists are doing. There's not a lot of tourists right now, so mostly we just sit and watch the cars go by.

 Lizards: what can I say that I haven't already said?

A lot.

I am tired of them and have declared all out war on anything lizard-like. Why?  The reasons are many right now.  A week ago it was mating season for the house lizards, so  they "chirp"ed.  I didn't know lizards did that until I moved over here.

"chiik,ckiik,chiik,chiik" most of the night.

I had four living in my kitchen -  they started getting together and having babies.

I'd open the refrigerator and one falls off the door and runs away.

Throw something in the trash and one runs out of the trash.

Go to the bathroom and lizards are on the wall.

Now, outside I don't mind, but just give me some space.  So against whatever Christian upbringing I have had, and trying not to let the Buddhist people around me know, I stomp, swat, drown and otherwise destroy the little pests in any way that I can.   "DEATH TO ALL LIZARDS".


When the boredom kicks in there is TV.  Not much help - the programs here are really bad.  They're mostly revenge/kung fu or monster shows.  Every vampire movie ever made is on here on a  regular basis.  The advertisements  for the next month on HBO are mostly second rate hits from years ago...."Guns of Navarone" with David Nivens (20 plus years old), "Inner Space" (10-15 years old), "Brian Stoker's Dracula" ...... you get the picture, I am sure.  Anyway, all the shows are worthless. Today I watched "The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl" and "Earth versus Spider".  Not a good day for TV.



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The Lizards:

It is an on going battle.  I have killed two more of the bigger ones and two or three of their babies. Now the house is crawling with the smaller,  everyday type of "house lizard". I am constantly killing the baby ones.

It is funny how the attitude changes.

When I first got here I remember seeing a baby lizard in the bathroom and thinking it was a good thing - it will keep all of the mosquitoes away, so I kind of watched it grow up.

Now?  A baby lizard? Get the flyswatter and kill the little bastard before it can grow up and have more babies.

Tonight I discovered an ants' nest between the toilet and the wall. I saw one of the big black ants go behind the upper part of the toilet, so I sprayed water and washed out 20 or 30 ants with eggs. I spent about 5 minutes killing them.

Things were finally things back to normal until I looked on the living room floor, and there was a different kind of ant, maybe 50 of them..... So again with the killing spree of God's little creatures. It seems like that is all I do anymore -  run around trying to keep Thai nature at bay.......I hate environmentalists.





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I have upset the ecological balance. About a month ago I killed one of the large Tokay lizards. I recently learned that they eat the other smaller lizards and I believe the baby Tokays.

I have been trying to come up with a way to rectify this and have devised a plan. I will paint myself green and yellow and live in the attic for a week yelling "TO KAY" between the hours of 10 pm and around 2 am. If it comes to it I may have to eat a few lizards just to convince them I am serious.

I hope it doesn't come to that.

My only problem is I don't know if the female or the male is the one that yells. If it's the male, no problem, I don't think I will be attractive enough to worry about it. If, on the other hand,  the female is the one that does the mating yell...well, I worry about the aggressiveness of the lizard and the cramped space of the attic.  I will let you know how my experiment works out.....life in the jungle gets weird.



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