It is evening, and the world seems to go still for a moment, as though some kind of signal has been lost. You hear a tiny bark. There in the corner: a gecko. If the corner is in an apartment that is in a suburb in a city in Malaysia, you hear a “cicak”, in Bangladesh, “tiktiki”.
Where does this tiny reptile get the confidence to make a sound like that? “Not the hiss or croak for me,” it says. The gecko licks its eyeball seductively: I mean, have you seen my feet?
Because geckos eat mosquitoes and moths, they “become part of the indoor menagerie and are often welcomed”, says Wikipedia. It makes me feel instantly rich to think of all of the creatures living in my household as a “menagerie”: the dog as aware of the gecko as you are, the gecko wary of the hamster in its cage. The daddy longlegs, wearing tiny gold bracelets and shoes of silk moire, judges all.
House geckos live for seven years and not for one second do they stop being proud of their feet. Each magnificent toe has its own delicate bauble, like a tapioca pearl, or drop of dew. If the gecko were to swish onto a pane of glass, and you looked at it from underneath, you would see that each paw looks like a fern-like flower: the baubles made of petals. The gecko uses these to stick to any surface – and just as easily, unstick. The verb for walking like this is “to spatula”.
A tiny, self-assured thing, living with you for seven years. In parts of India, the gecko’s “tik tik tik”, which sounds like “thik thik thik”, or “correct correct correct” in Bengali, is an endorsement of the human statement made just before it. Don’t ignore the gecko in your menagerie: it is there to give you confidence, too.
Unless it decides to drop, in which case you will need to practice gecko divination to understand how to feel. Ancient Egyptians also lived with house geckos. In The Book of the Gecko, scratched onto papyrus with a reed some time in the first century AD, every new line starts with the words, “If the gecko falls … ” When it lands on a woman’s right breast, “her heart will be greatly distressed”, on her left, “she will be pleased within her family”.
Best of all, in those seven years of daily life, a tiny cold reptile with gorgeous feet dropping onto you while you, but one animal in the menagerie of several, with your own animal needs, are being amorous. “If it falls on a woman who is having sex,” the Egyptians wrote, “she will rejoice, she will rejoice anew over this same year.”
Have an animal, insect or other subject you feel is worthy of appearing in a very serious column? Let me know: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com
• Helen Sullivan is a Guardian journalist. Her first book, Calcium-Magnesium, will be published in 2023
