Ta-ta Fauna

For the most part, I have gotten along pretty well with the little critters one has to live with on a day-to-day basis in Cambodia: the ants, the house lizards, the chickens, the mice, the mysterious flying insects, the bathroom spiders, the frogs, the bats, the birds. (This obviously excludes you, mosquitoes.) I've learned how to keep ants out of my room (by keeping no food whatsoever), as well as mice (ditto). I've gotten used to finding gecko and mouse droppings in unexpected places, and hearing the strange high-pitched cries of nocturnal animals that fly into my room in the dead of night. I've learned how to shoo chickens away from kitchen surfaces where people food is prepared ("Shhhhhh! Shhhhhhh!" you say to them). And so I believed we had come to an understanding.

Until recently. Recently I have been thinking that 2 particular members of the Cambodian domestic wildlife community have it in for me. The less egregious offender is the gecko. Geckoes are supposed to be friendly little creatures who eat bugs and look all tropical-country-iconic and shit. And for the most part they are. A few weeks ago, though, I brought some recently-washed-and-dried-on-the-line clothes into my room and hung them on a nail directly below my only light where the geckoes like to feast on little bugs. The next day I discovered that one anonymous gecko had had what we can call a severe gastrointestinal event all over one of my
shirts. Not just any shirt, but a teaching shirt.

(If I was a doctor and that gecko was in my care, I would have prescribed it a hefty dose of cipro. The poor little guy was obviously suffering.)

Normally this event would have been pretty annoying, because I hate laundry and all my efforts on this particular shirt would have to be repeated. But at that juncture it didn't bother me too much, because I was almost done with teaching, and who needs another teaching shirt over the vacation? Not me! At any rate, I tried (after an appropriate period of procrastination) to remedy the problem; but the shirt was irreversibly stained, and so it has gone into the rag pile.

The more egregious offender of the two is the tukai. Americans probably aren't familiar with these lizards, but they are all too well-known in Cambodia...or at least, their voices are. It's rare to actually see a tukai, because they're shy creatures despite living in close proximity to humans (as in, they live behind the poles supporting wooden houses--what the heck are those called?). As far as I can tell, they are about a foot long and nocturnal. The reason they're called tukais is that they make the strangest animal calls I have ever heard. It starts with a loud intake of (lizard) breath, which sounds like a fork being held against the edge of a fan blade: a quick, almost mechanical staccato. Then the lizard expels this breath in a series of 4 to 10 ear-splitting double clicks. It sounds like they're calling out "tukai," hence the name. My host mother has told me that a house where tukais cry a lot is a good house (I guess it's the same theory behind a house with a lot of plants?).

(This may be a tukai. Then again it may be some other kind of lizard.)

As long as I can remember, a tukai has lived basically 3 feet above the head of my bed. At one point, it actually fell from its usual perch and caught itself on my mosquito net. We had a stare-down, and then it wriggled its way back home.

I don't know if it's always been the same tukai, but I'm beginning to suspect that a new, more aggressive resident has pushed the old fella out. Why? Because ever since the end of cool season, my little cold-blooded friend has been doing his outsized tukai cry several times every night. I used to sleep through the night despite the traffic noises, dogs barking, early-morning (4 am) music from the pagoda, etc. So it's possible the old tukai cried and I never heard it. But the new one is a different story. I'm now awakened at least once a night by a piercing "Tukai! Tukai! Tukai! Tukai!" that sounds as if it's coming from about 3 inches behind my eyeballs.

I assume it is looking for mate, and if this is the case, it had better find one soon. Otherwise, I can't promise I'm not going to stick a broom handle behind that wooden post, get the tukai to latch onto it with its powerful jaws, and secretly set it free in an unsuspecting neighbor's house.