The Case of the Vanishing Lizards

It was Sunday night.  I finished what I needed to do in the restroom, and was almost tucked away for the evening.  Amanda had waited awhile to ready herself for bed.  She used the restroom, washed her hands, and was about to leave the restroom when I heard a whisper say, "Stacy."  I wasn't sure what was going on, as I was almost nearly drifting asleep.  Then I heard it again, louder, "Stacy!"  I rolled around and asked her what was up?

"There's a lizard in the shower!"
"Noooooo....why? How did it get in there?" I asked as I was slowly sitting up in bed.
"I don't know!"
I asked her how big the lizard was.
"It's just a little guy."
"Oh, okay.  I will just make sure not to use the rest room for the rest of the night."
"Yeah, but you're lucky because you showered already!"
I decided to climb out of bed to take a look for myself.  Sure enough, there was a tiny lizard on the wall in our shower.  "Ewwww!  Amanda, I am scared.  How did it get in here?" I asked again, not really believing what I was seeing.  She said she didn't know.
"Maybe he crawled up from the shower drain..." I ventured.
"That could be.  If he touches me, I am going to scream bloody murder."
We both watched the lizard for a few minutes, thinking about what we should do.  Amanda started to walk back to her bed, leaving me standing in the doorway to keep an eye on the little guy (little guy is not being said in an affectionate way).  Amanda was content leaving the lizard where it was.  I suddenly needed to use the restroom again, and was not going to go in there while the lizard was there. 

We kind of sat/stood in silence for a while, wondering what the lizard's next move might be.  I turned and looked at Amanda for just a second, and in that time, we had lost any visual on the lizard.  "Amanda, he's not there anymore!"
"Well, where is he?"
"I'm not going in there to look for it.  No way."  I looked around the bathroom as best I could without entering through the door.  No lizard in sight. 

All of a sudden, a white lizard (different from the one we had seen) ran on the wall from inside our bedroom, and entered the bathroom through the crack in the door.  Amanda and I both screamed.  No one came to our rescue. 
I tried looking for where that lizard went, and couldn't see him or the first lizard anywhere.  The worst part is knowing that the lizards are in your bathroom, but not being able to see them. 

Amanda got up and went into the bathroom, no lizards.  We decided it was probably safe for me to use the restroom.  It took every ounce of courage I had to enter the room.  The last thing I wanted was for a lizard to drop into my lap or run across my feet. 

20 minutes later, I was in the restroom.  I told Amanda that if I screamed, she needed to come save me.  No lizard sightings.

I decided that I would feel better if the bathroom door was closed.  It wouldn't make any difference I was sure, but in my head I could convince myself that it would.  We shut the door and put our laundry bucket on one side of the door, and had the box of laundry detergent on it's side, trying to cover the space underneath the bathroom door.  We definitely didn't want a lizard crawling into bed with us. 

The rest of the night was fine as we had the bathroom door shut, and decided that we weren't going to open it until morning if it could be helped.  It took us both a while to fall asleep.  The next morning, there wasn't a lizard in sight and we thought we were safe.

Lizard to the left of the light.

Yesterday after work, we returned home, and Amanda went into the restroom.  She came out, and it was my turn next.  After Sunday's events, there was no way I was entering the bathroom without taking a look around first.  Sure enough, on the ceiling by the light was a little lizard.  "Oh my gosh!"

"Whaaaaaat?"
"A lizard friend is back."
"What?!  Ewww!  He was in there while I was in there?!"
"Yeah."
Amanda came and took a look.  "Gross."
She went back to her bed, and I stood watch in the doorway.  The lizard didn't seem as scary as the night before because 1.  There was still some daylight left, and we all know things are scarier at night time, and 2. This lizard was moving very slowly.  "I am much bigger than the lizard."
Amanda smiled and laughed, "yes you are."

I watched the lizard for a while, and he wasn't going to go anywhere too quickly. 

I walked back to my bed and unwrapped the souvenirs I purchased earlier in the day.  I went back and looked for the lizard, but he was no where to be seen.  "Amanda, he is missing!"
"Are you sure?"
I manned up and walked into the bathroom and looked for him.  "He's definitely not here."  How does a lizard just disappear?  It didn't make sense, especially for how slowly he was moving.  The rest of the night we never saw another sign of him.

After we got ready to go to bed, we finished what we needed to do in the bathroom, and I shut the door, "Just in case."  We were reading for maybe an hour or two, and I wanted to use the restroom once more so I wouldn't have to get up during the night and encounter any friends.  I turned on the bathroom light, and opened the door.

On the wall was a lizard at least 3-4 times bigger than the one we saw on the ceiling earlier.  "OH MY GOSH!!"
"Another lizard?"
"Amanda, this one looks like he ate the other one!  Ew ew ew ew."
Amanda crawled out of bed to take a look.  "That's so gross."
"Where are they coming from?!  This doesn't make any sense!!" 
Suddenly, the lizard ran across the wall.  We both screamed bloody murder. 
Two minutes later, a guy walked by and knocked on our glass, "hello?  Are you okay?"
"There's a lizard in our bathroom!" I told him.
"A lizard?"
"Like a gecko or something."
"Is it okay if I come in?"
"Of course of course!  Amanda, please let him in!"
Amanda unlocked the door and our friend came in and looked in the bathroom.
"Do you see him?" I asked.
"Yea, he's right there," he said, pointing to the floor of the shower.  The lizard had ran again while we weren't looking.  "Do you want me to kill him?"
Amanda and I looked at each other.  "Whatever you want to do.  You don't have to kill him.  We have a plastic bag if you want to just take him outside."
"Yes, please just take him outside.  He doesn't need to die," Amanda said.
Our friend didn't want to take the lizard outside.  He started moving closer to the lizard and Amanda couldn't watch, so she ran out of our dorm room.  Our friend took off one of his sandals and hit the lizard with it.  The lizard wasn't going down without a fight.  It kept running around the shower floor, and I just didn't want the lizard in the bathroom anymore.  Finally, the cat and mouse game was over and we had a dead lizard on our floor.
"Ew," was all my brain would let me say.
Our friend cleaned up the lizard for us.  Amanda was still in the hall, talking to another gentleman in the hallway. 
"Thank you so much!"  I then decided that I should probably ask the guy in our bathroom about the lizard. "What kind of lizard was it?"
"A wall gecko.  They just climb on the walls."
"And ceilings and floors," I added.  "How are they getting in?"
"They live in the walls, and then they go outside and enter rooms through the windows, and crawl on the inside walls.  They aren't that common."
"Not that common?  We've had 4 in the past two days."
"Wow.  This one was an accident though."
"How do you know that?"
"He was too big to come in through a window.  He was just here."
I didn't know what else I needed to know, except "will they crawl into our beds?"
"No."  I think that was all I needed to know.  Our friend left before we could get his name.  Amanda came back into the room and I filled her in on the details about the gecko.  We checked all our windows, and none of the netting was ripped or broken, but we closed a majority of them anyway. 

As part of our new nightly ritual, we shut the bathroom door and went to sleep.