My Limit!

One of the things I’ve learned in the past few years is that I can handle more disgusting things/situations than I’ve ever imagined I could…as a missionary, as a teacher, as a mother.  I’ve sifted hundreds of small black bugs (and their larva) out of my flour just so I’d be able to use that flour that month.  I’ve hand-washed cloth diapers filled with horribly disgusting baby poop.   I’ve told several of my elementary students to please stop picking their nose and eating their boogers.  I’ve taken several large dead cockroaches away from my curious child.  I’ve added ant infested sugar to my coffee and, after fishing out as many as possible, I drank the coffee and whatever ants were left.  I’ve eaten greens cooked in pig’s blood. 

But today…….today I’ve found the limit of what I can handle.  Today, stuck to my door frame, I found a fat, beige, headless gecko.  Did you get that??   HEADLESS!!!!   As in: it had no HEAD!!!!!!!  It was a bloody stump of a gecko body whose back left foot was still suctioned to my door frame!!  Then I thought to myself (while simultaneously gagging) “Hmm…I wonder where its head went."  My vast knowledge of gravity prompted me to look down, and sure enough, there was the gecko head…already covered in ants. 

Why was this gecko decapitated…you may ask!?!    I.  DON’T. KNOW.  (And I think that’s the worst part.)  After close inspection, from a reasonable distance of at least 4 feet (because you never know when the headless gecko is going to spring back to life and POUNCE on you!!),  I realized that the gecko was positioned in such a location that it would have been impossible for the door to have caused the “head-less-ness.” 

And not knowing the exact length of time a dead gecko can remain suctioned to any given surface, I imagined the body falling on me the next time I stepped through the threshold of our house.  (That thought will probably haunt me…forever!)

Thus, I realized that unless this cranially-challenged lizard was removed, we were NEVER going to be able to use our front door again.  And I could not do it!!  I had found my limit.  Apparently, I’m incapable of removing, touching, coming near, or even looking at for more than a few seconds at a time geckos whose heads are no longer attached to their bodies. 

And since Jordan wasn’t around, I went over to my neighbor and good friend, Erin’s house to ask her to please come see my lifeless visitor.  She came right away and swiftly removed the body and head with a paper towel, because she’s awesome (and brave) like that!  Then she tried to make me feel better by telling me it clearly was just smooshed in the door…which is very sweet, but a lie!  Good try, Erin!

So there you have it…my limit: headless geckos