This was the Four-lined Tree-Frog in my kitchen this morning. I tried to catch him and put him out, and he managed to disappear, only to reappear (see second photo)…

 

Yes, that’s him on the book case, reading the titles of the books. He’s darkened himself to match the cover of my husband’s honours thesis on pregnancy urine. For those of you who remember that they used to use frogs to determine if a woman was pregnant, that might seem so wrong on so many levels, but I assure you, he’s obviously looking for the book on the far right, titled “Frogs and Toads of the World.”

Told you he could read.

I have just been crawling under the double bed in our bedroom, with a torch, looking for wildlife – all part of living in the tropics. Worst thing is I can’t find the blessed thing. It is still in our room somewhere, and is bound to make himself clammily felt at some ungodly hour of the night.

I had just brought in the washing from the line – which included a pair of dark green double bedsheets. I dumped the lot on the bed and grabbed up a sheet to fold without looking – and closed my hand over something cold and wriggly and very much alive.

Dunno who got the greatest scare, me or the tree frog – one of those ones with legs longer than its body, bit like jointed cantilevers with suction caps the size of thumb prints on the ends. It shot up in the air as if it had springs, almost hit the ceiling as it sailed across the room, made two more extravagant leaps to nowhere before disappearing under the bed.

Trouble is, it was no long there by the time I had recovered enough to look. And it had peed on the sheet too, darn it.

The civets fight and squeal in my ceiling. [I’m told they make very good coffee, as my Orbit editor, Darren Nash, took care to point out to me. He has since decided never to accept a cup of coffee from me.]

The house geckoes and the spotted geckoes fight over the choice places next to the lights, and I have to fight the tree frog for the right to use my shower.

And today, a treeshrew (which does not live in trees and is not a shrew, or a squirrel, or in fact any kind of rodent), set off the burglar alarm by scampering down the passageway after entering through the back window.

Oh, and if you want to know about the coffee, check it our here.

The pix of the treeshrew is from Mamalia Semenanjung Malaysia by a special friend of ours, Mohd Momin Khan, the best book for Peninsular Malaysia mammals, and was drawn by another pal of mine Teh Yew Kiang.

Dig those crazy toenails.

The pix of the frog is from my bathroom.