The story of my pet lizard

I’m not a typical lizard lover. I only find them the most tolerable of house insects/reptiles because they are considerate enough to stay on the ceiling or high up on walls. They don’t come in the way of regular human activity. My feeling for lizards is as distant as that. Yet, I managed to call one my pet. Notice how I say ‘call’ one my pet as opposed to make one my pet. I can’t imagine a lizard-man relationship grow any further than that. I can’t train it to fetch me stuff or shake hands with me. But there was something this lizard did for me. It killed cockroaches.

I can’t stand cockroaches. I have not been able to or don’t want to understand the significance of the cockroach in maintaining ecological balance. I wish they just became extinct. I can’t look at a cockroach. I find it difficult to even kill them. Few will understand the mental torment I went through every time I saw one crawling in my house. I had read somewhere that one cockroach you see outside is indicative of a 100 lurking in various dark corners. It also means that this one already has or is going to lay eggs in places hard to monitor. So, much as I hated it, I’d have to kill it.

I lived alone in a rented studio apartment. So at times like this I had no one to pass the buck to. It would be comical to watch me with a secret camera at times like that. I would pick the broom and from as far as possible chase it till it was dead. Screaming myself throughout and then let out another, final scream of disgust as it dies, my eyes welling up with tears.

I believed in minimal furniture. So my mattresses were on the floor. I was terrorized at the prospect of a cockroach crawling over me when I am asleep.

Everyday, when I returned home from work and turned the kitchen light on, I would hear loud lizard steps as it raced out of the window. I would often even catch a glimpse of the massive creature. It was huge for a lizard. It had probably been feeding on cockroaches in this apartment for years. Interestingly, it never came in sight when I was home. Infact, it crawled out of the window once I was home. It stayed out of my house, while I was at home. I instantly fell in love with the lizard. It probably crawled all over my house wiping away all insects while I was away. So, the lizard actually got to live in the house longer than me since I spent very few waking hours at home.

Yesterday, I moved out. I did the packing and moving all by myself. Packing the refrigerator was a task. I had to wrap bubble paper all around it and tape it up. As I shifted the fridge away from the wall, I felt this stench. I couldn’t decide what it was, wondered if it came from outside. But as I shifted the fridge a little more, I saw it - a rotting corpse of an enormous lizard. I let out a shriek. Hot tears rolled down at the shock of the rotten sight, at the thought of going through all this toil and torment all alone. At the thought that I may have accidentally killed my pet when I used Baygon spray rather generously a few days ago.