Chumporn, Thailand
August 2ooo
 

I ONLY saw it when I got into bed. Horrible. Awful. Right there
above me. Defying gravity. Stuck to the ceiling like Spiderman; only this wasn't Spiderman - or even a spider. It was a dragon, or a lizard, or a ghekko , or an iguana ... something like that. And it was huge; I mean HUGE.

I'd seen another whatever-it-was in a cage at the reptile
zoo just the other day. But I couldn't remember which. Anyway, no time for wondering now - no time for switching out the light like I was
going to do. This monster thing was stuck there on the ceiling,
a foot long or more, legs and arms ( or are they all legs?} splayed
out, its ancient armour-plated body looking horribly heavy high up there above me.

Any second now; any second...I could just vizualise it free-falling right down onto the bed beside me. Or ,far worse, thudding plum into my face with a direct hit before I could move.

But I did move. You bet I did. I was off that bed in an instant. But what to do next? Now that's the question.

I was alone in the guestroom at a friend's country house in Thailand. Most people can't afford one house in Thailand, let alone two. But he can. He's a top man in his profession. Grade lO, the ultimate. Honoured by the king for services to the country - all that kind of stuff. His place out in the sticks is what we would call a farmhouse back home; a big old timbered place tucked away in the forest,100 metres or so down an unmade track off the nearest road. He'd invited me there to meet his family.

We'd both slept in the guest room the night before; it was so big.  But now he'd gone back to the city and I was left there to sleep my last night alone.
 

I guess it was around 10 o'clock. Inside the main house the women had all gone to bed. There were generations of them - the grandmother of 86, daughters in law, sisters in law, aunts, cousins. Loads of them. Like I say, it was a big house. They'd spent all weekend cooking and
fussing about. But now the men were all gone. All except me. And the ladies were in bed.

So what shall I do now, with this monster dragon/lizard thing on the ceiling? Do they bite? Do they sting? Do they breathe fire down their nostrils? Oh God, why can't I remember what it said in that guidebook at the zoo?

I decide to take a chance. Not to be brave, you understand. Just to take a chance. There's no way I can sleep in this room. Not with that ghekko or whatever-it-is poised to plop down onto me at any moment. I mean, can you imagine...? Ugh, the very thought sends me into horror-movie land.

OK then. Stay calm. Consider the options. Can't sit up all night watching it; that would be ridiculous. Can't lock it in here and go outside to sleep; that would be absurd. No, I'll just have to catch it. That's what I'll do. But what on earth with?

A quick recce of the place leaves me little choice. It's a big guest house all right. But it's sparsely furnished. A fishing net? You must be joking!

In the end, to be absolutely honest, the only objects I could find that were even remotely suitable, were a child's plastic potty (left thoughtfully for me by the old granny in case I needed to pee in the night) and the top of an enormous earthenware urn , shaped like an upturned dish, and which I can grasp by its ornamental spike of a topknot.
 

The idea being, you see, that I would knock the THING off its perch, catch it like a cricket ball in the potty , and then ram the German-helmet lid down on top before it could spring out again.Easypeesy. Hey presto. Good as done. I'll carry it outside in triumph; let the fine little chap zip off into the woods. Back to nature. Free again. Quite unharmed. Got the picture? Me. Bit of a hero, really.

Trouble was, the THING wouldn't play ball. Up there on the ceiling
(it must have been 12-foot high) his l80-degree, all-seeing eyes were watching my every move as I circled down below him. No way could I reach him. Not even standing on the bed. And anyway, can you imagine
 the kind of contortions it would have taken with potty poised in one hand while the other knocked him off with my upturned lid thing? And
supposing he missed the potty? What then? Splodge - right on my head. Imagine! No thank you.

So I resorted to one of the lesser-known abilities of amateur
ghekko hunters. It's called cushion throwing.

 
Now the idea of this game is that you gather up all of the cushions you can find in a rarely-used guesthouse deep in the forests of Thailand (plus any spare pillows that just happen to be close at hand) and you make a big pile of your ammunition in the middle of the room. Then you procede to take aim at the ghekko. Not to hit it, you understand. In fact, just to miss it; but close enough for it to realise that it ought to move.

Next stage - and here is where only the very best skills succeed - you make it steadily work its way downwards to a height at which catching it neatly between a child's plastic potty and an upturned dish thing with a spike on top becomes a distinct, and physical, possibility.

Well either that, or by cunningly opening the door and driving the THING in that general direction, to hope that it will spot the obvious opportunity and slope off into the night. Not such a triumph, it must be said. But something of a moral victory nonetheless.

Anyway, there I am , feeling rather pleased with myself, standing on the bed and adopting the afore-mentioned style of small-game hunting
which you will certainly not find in any textbook at the local library, raining cushions towards - but not quite at - the target, when one of the old ladies, alerted by the noise, appears at the doorway.

Why am I pleased? Well because I have managed to get the THING down, after a series of expertly-aimed cushion deliveries, to (a) the kind of height where I am considering giving it serious potty training, and (b) where if it whiffs in an unexpected breath of sweet night air I figure it might just realise for itself that a dignified exit from this unusual bombardment, is on the cards.

But the old lady is certainly not amused. In fact, quite the opposite. My command of the Thai language, and hers of English, being equally
non-existent, mattered not a jot. She summed up the scene in an instant. I had gone stark-raving mad.

It didn't help that the object of my cushion-throwing was out of her sight. But the look on her face, as she surveyed the picture in the dead of night, of me standing on the bed, potty in hand, ammunition piled up all around, chucking 'bombs' in the general direction from which she had so recently appeared, and grinning like a cheshire cat, left her in not the slightest doubt: I had taken complete leave of my senses.

How do I know? Well it was easy to tell by the way she ran screeching into the main house and the speed with which the four big bolts were sent thundering shut across the back door.

But alas, worse was to follow because, horror of horrors, a quick glance over at the wall confirmed that my cunning enemy had himself taken advantage of the screeching diversion, and simply disappeared.
I mean, yes, gone. Skidaddled. Up'd sticks. Vanished. But where to? Oh God, he certainly hadn't taken the fresh air option; the old lady had seen to that. So where?

Gingerly, I searched every nook and every cranny. It's a big guest house. As big as a double garage back home. I looked under the chairs, under the bed, on top of the wardrobe. You name it, and I peeked into it, or over it, or round it. But no ghekko. I felt almost lonely. In a strange way I'd got kind of used to him being around.

And then it dawned on me. Up there in the ceiling; all 12-foot high of it, there were recesses and beams and things, which not even me with my new-found agility, could investigate. Somewhere up there, he'd either gone out the way he'd come in, or maybe he was just sitting there waiting, waiting for me to get back into bed, waiting to take up position again, waiting for lights out, waiting to take his revenge...

And that's when I remembered the mosquito net.

It had taken up precious space in my big back-pack from the very beginning, but I had only begun to begrudge it recently. Spray cans and ointments had dealt with the few mosquitos I'd found in India and Nepal, and here in Thailand, and I confess that I'd marked it out mentally as the first thing to go when I did my very next load-lightening audit. But it was now that I discovered why I'd brought it - it wasn't to deter mosquitos after all; it was as the ultimate protection from night-flying ghekkos. Perfect. I settled down on a settee, as far from the bed as I could possibly get, cocooned in the damn thing. And do you know what? It works.

I woke myself up every couple of hours, as you do in these kind of circumstances. But there was no ghekko in sight. Not one.

An uneventful night, I wouldn't call it. But a night without attack from above, certainly. All I can think is that those bulging eyes somewhere up there must have stared down in disbelief at the oh-so-strange creature wrapped up in a tight, white, shroud of muslin, and decided, after all, to leave well alone.

Come to think of it, perhaps it reckoned I was a crysalis which might hatch into some kind of ghekko-eating monster in the morning. M'm.... what a strange night it must have been for "him up there" too!
 
 
                                             (c)Richard Meredith
                                            - all rights reserved