Living on the tenth floor has the advantage of beautiful views and relatively little street noise. Contact with urban wildlife is, however, all but non-existent. An occasional swift flits by, but pigeons and sparrows remain at the height of the tree canopies, about half-way down from my level. No stray cats on the roof, no rats, nothing… No, that’s not completely true. There are ants, many of them, the small soft and very fast type. Crumbs or spilled sauce left on the kitchen table will attract them in no time. And when I follow their trail it inevitably leads out to the balcony and on. Where would their nest be, where is their queen birthing more members of the colony than I can wipe in my efforts to keep my food for myself. Would the nest be ten floors down, in between the roots of the trees lining the road? Imagine, climbing all the way up to my kitchen and when lucky, not being detected and finding food, having to descend all the way down again… In human terms that would be something like walking from Jakarta to Bogor and back with a morsel of something to feed not yourself, but the queen, or the colony. No wonder there are that many of them.
And then there suddenly was this tiny little gecko. A wee little fellow, definitely not able to swallow more than half a mosquito. He clung to the wall above the standing lamp—instinct, hard-wired into his DNA, as that is where the flying insects eventually end up. But I worried about his food intake. This apartment being screened on all doors and windows, where would the necessary food come from? I felt so sorry that I opened the screen doors to the balcony hoping that it would increase his food supply.
For several consecutive days, or rather evenings, he was still there, quite unafraid when I approached. And then, yesterday when I wanted to take a picture of him for this blog, he was nowhere to be found. I looked behind the curtains and the TV, I checked behind the paintings on his favourite wall, and searched again in the places I had examined already… nothing.
I hope I won't find him one of these days, desiccated with ants taking his edible parts down to their queen. I hope he will have realised that this apartment is no Garden of Eden for geckoes and have moved on to greener pastures so to say, out and down to where mosquitoes are more plentiful.
Such a pity that geckoes don't eat ants, it would have solved both our problems.
