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10:03 a.m. - Thursday, Feb. 09, 2006
MsLeslie Closes the Lizards' Lounge
With the whole ceiling down and two walls stripped to the studs, I am at the ‘What hath MsLeslie Wrought’ stage.

This is the place where you suddenly realize that you’ve created a lot of chaos in what was formerly a pretty usable room and there is no turning back, and you think…. What have I done?

I find myself questioning my ideas and abilities. Can I really do this? Was this the right place to start? Was it really necessary to tear things completely apart? The answers are ‘yes’, ‘yes’ and ‘yes’, but it is hard, standing waist deep in sheetrock and plaster dust to keep the faith. All I can do at this point is try not to think about it and just keep on destroying. Sooner or later, I am bound to come to the rebuilding phase…. And I can’t wait.

My companions on this job would be delighted, however, to wait. I am finding, as I peel back big slabs of sheetrock, that there are many slits and holes through which I can see daylight. The space between my walls have become therefore, a rather popular hangout for all manner of critters.

The ever present ‘Palmetto Bugs’.. which are just a kind of giant cockroach as far as I can tell, find the space to be a dark and warm hideout from which they can make the occasional foray into my living space in search of the tasty goo I sit out for them inside those black plastic roach motels. I am pleased, in fact, to notice that there are actually very few of these marauders in the walls. It’s a testament not only to the power of poison, but to the efficiency of my other wall-guests as well. These are the squiggly geckoes that seem to outnumber the roaches by four or five to one. I don’t hate these lizards. They are pretty clean, compared to a cockroach, and they do eat bugs, including, I think, the mud-daubers who have found their way into my attic. No, I don’t hate them, but I am unable to get used to seeing them wiggle away when I shed light on a new section of wall. We always seem to startle each other. Me, because I keep convincing myself that the last one was well… the last one. Them, because for their whole life, they have thought that their lounge between the walls was private. It must be quite a shocker to find themselves blinking in the new light, only to focus on me with my scarf on my head and a flat bar in my hand.

I’ll admit that I killed one. I couldn’t get him to find a new corner, out of the way, so I hit him with the flat side of my bar. It was awfully un-Buddhist of me, and although I am not one, I admire their approach to life. I regretted my violence immediately, as I felt a bad energy surrounding the deed. I had, in fact, killed an ally. Geckoes eat bugs and I do hate me some bugs. So since the murder, I’ve tried to accommodate the lizards as they scurry around my debris pile. It’s not easy though. I still get the shudders when I see them.

As I rebuild, I’ll seal off those places that invite lizards and insects in. I’ll also insulate the walls with fiberglass, which, I am told, is decidedly unattractive to living things. Simply doing that will deprive whole families of geckoes, so as I write this, I realize I will be obligated in a crazy kind of way to see if I can’t create a little gecko park in my yard. We can live together.. just not in the same house.

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