It was raining outside, as it had been all day. Suddenly shrieks were heard from the children's bedroom. The 'auntie' staying with us and I turned from were we were in the kitchen just in time to see a big slimy frog come leaping out of the children's bedroom. I'm sure he was as startled as the girls were terrified! It is still a mystery to me how he got in the house. I could not get a straight story from the girls as to where they first saw him. Anyways, maybe he was trying to escape the rain. The 'auntie' staying with us bravely caught him in a basin and deposited him outside.
You can see him below, next to the waste basket in the kitchen. I'm sorry the picture is not clearer. It was a quick grab the camera and snap before he lept away.
Do you see the next creature we chased around the children's room the same night?
He here is a bit closer up....zoomed in, visiting the section of our library that holds our "My Little Animal Board Book" How appropriate!
Can you still see him, by the same book? This is our Mozambican book holder. The girls were having a hard time lining up books neatly on a shelf. I had seen a type of cloth hanging bookhold in the Aldies food store in Wisconsin before we came. So using that same idea, we sewed loops in a capulana (the wrap skirt cloths so common here), put bamboo sticks through the loops and hung it from the ceiling beam. It works great! The small books are to go on top, the medium size books in the middle and big tall books in the bottom pocket. As you can see, the girls don't always get the sizes right (the Berenstein Bears book is a medium size and should go in the middle pocket) but they are much better about putting away their books now. And the book hanger takes up very little space in their small bedroom.
Anyways, back to the gecko. Thankfully, since our first week here we have called the little geckos around our house "Sammy, our pet." So the girls are pretty excited (and not scared) when they see one and we see them (there is more than one) almost daily. It is spring here and it has been fun to find tiny baby geckos around the house. But this particular gecko has been living on the girls' floor in their room for 3 days. I don't know if he fell off the wall and couldn't climb back up but he was definitely living on the floor. He would startled me as he would scramble out of my way as I looked for things in the girls' room. I tried putting some legos as a ramp from the floor to the wall to see if he would climb up it and resume living up by the roof as most of his kin do. But it didn't work. As you can see from this picture, he did manage to climb into our book hanger. Of course, then Victoria did not want to get a book out. Earlier in the day, an MK had been playing with the girls. She has been here a year and a half and is more advanced in her tolerance of creatures. She actually touched the gecko and chased him around the room for awhile. So the night of the frog, after our brave 'auntie' threw the frog out of the house, she worked on catching this little guy. It took some work as he scampered out of reach, but finally she cornered him and he too got put out of the house. So for today, their room was "creature free." Other creatures we have found have tended to be smaller in size, a cricket, a fly, little worms, etc. It seems as if the creatures are seeking refuge from the downpours outside.
