We have one and when I say squatter I mean it in both senses of the word. Yes, this individual occupies our apartment and he neither, owns, rents or has otherwise lawful permission to use said apartment.
The second definition of squatter which this resident has great skill at is that he regularly unloads his bowels in my kitchen, on the breakfast bar and in various places across our white tiled floor. By morning when us legal tenants have woken up I have the joy of scraping heated and dried poop off various areas of the apartment.
This war of attrition has been going on for three months now and as of this weekend I now feel like I am on the losing side and I need to remedy this by going on the offensive.
You are possibly wondering what foul tenant could possibly be doing something has grotesque as doing their toilet anywhere but the toilet. Admittedly, I have a tendency to exaggerate so don't be concerned, we aren't living with heroin addicts. I am dealing with an efficient predator, lightening quick and extremely agile.
I have a big gecko.
He lives under my fridge and he is the one who comes out each night to defecate all over my apartment and I have honestly had enough!
This all began in May after moving into our new old apartment which is not air tight and has lots of cracks, crannies and open areas whereby the tropical wildlife in all their variety can enter and find somewhere warm to settle. Wikihow explains that geckos like warm places to live. We live in bloody Singapore. Why do they need the underneath of my fridge to keep warm? 30 degrees every day outside isn't enough? Huh? Huh? Huh?
Anyway, going back to May. Shortly after we moved in my husband decided to meet a friend for a drink at our local bar. About 30 minutes after he left I went to the fridge to make my sixteenth gin and tonic when something black and fast darted just by my foot and disappeared somewhere in the kitchen. There was no question in my mind that it was a mouse. Black, long tail, nippy. I left the fridge door open, ran into the living room, stood on the sofa and phoned my husband. Here is the FBI transcript of that conversation:
Me: Help, you have to come home now.
Him: Why, what's happened?
Me: You have to come home, there is a mouse in the apartment. Come home now?
Him: Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. I am not coming home.
Me: Why are you laughing? This is serious. I can't live here if there is a mouse. We need to go back to the old apartment or back to England.
Him: Hahahahahahahahaha. Stop being silly. We can't move back home. I am having a drink with David. Grow a pair and deal with it. What do you want me to do anyway?
Me: What good are you?
Him: Stop being silly.
Me: Dial tone
Chivalry is dead people. If this had been the 1500's he would have jumped on his horse, rode straight back home and within an hour that mouse's head would have been mounted on my wall.
I blame the feminists.
I managed to go back into the kitchen with my eyes closed to shut the fridge door and then decided at 8pm to go to bed as it meant I could keep my feet off the floor and wasn't anywhere near the kitchen. I then decided to message my friend to get some sympathy. Here is the FBI transcript of that conversation. It is redacted in compliance with NSA guidelines:
Me: Jo. There is a mouse. I want to cry. I have to move out.
Jo: No way, not up there. Where. How?
Me: I don't understand. We have only been here two weeks. I can't live with a mouse. Snakes, geckos, spiders, roaches but not mice, not mice.
Jo: My friends' hamster committed suicide off her balcony. Your mouse might do the same.
Me: Don't make me laugh. This is very serious.
Jo: Are you sure it wasn't a cockroach in fancy dress. It might have been a rat? I did see pest control outside your apartment block earlier.
Me: Wonderful!, I wrote to you for comfort. Bloody Rob wouldn't even come back to help me.
Jo: Seriously, what a meanie. You might be eaten alive. I can see it in The Straits Times. Girl eaten alive by door mouse.
Me: It is not funny. It is serious. I will need to be carried around the apartment so I don't have to put my feet down.
Jo: Why don't you use the kids scooters then you might run it over while you are scooting.
Me: "You have left the conversation".
Now in fairness I have never seen a mouse again in our kitchen but I did see a very big gecko under our fridge shortly after this incident. Which does make me think perhaps Jo was slightly right in that it was a gecko in a mouse costume.
I don't really mind geckos. They are handy, a bit like bees with their honey making. Geckos eat mosquitoes and insects and will in theory keep our apartment free of that other annoying tropical killer, dengue fever.
I am quite happy to co-habit with geckos as long as they are passing through but not when they set up residence under my fridge and jump out at me on a regular basis and more importantly shit all over my apartment. (I apologise for my fruity language but like I said, this is war). I appreciate we are all animals and bowels need to be moved but did you know that gecko faeces contains salmonella. Now you do not want that spread around your kitchen when you are making chocolate chip cookies.
Over the last few months I have spent every morning cleaning up gecko poo and on Saturday night it was the last straw. Within minutes of turning the lights off and going to bed the big gecko under our fridge was out. I know this because I forgot my phone in the living room so hurriedly ran back in and turned the lights on. Within a split second I saw him on the wall and he quickly scurried behind the bookcase. Within this second I also managed to step in a fresh poo which smeared across the tiles and remains stuck on my white flip flop. That was it. I was after blood.
In my desperation, at midnight on the same Saturday, I decided to turn to the Internet trolls otherwise known as the Singapore Psycho Wives / Singapore Expat Wives. They have two Facebook forums. One known as Singapore Expat Wives and the other the Real Singapore Expat Wives. Basically the only difference is the Real Expat Wives are bitchier. I decided to contact the Real group on Facebook as I had every intention on that night to kill the gecko and didn't want the limp wristed hippy do-gooders on Singapore Expat Wives telling me about God's creatures and blah blah blah.
What can I say? There are a lot of expat women awake at midnight keen to discuss geckos and within half an hour I already had a variety of strategies. Through a combination of Wikihow and advice from the ladies on the forum I had some super ideas. The most stupid method was Wikihow's idea to hold a box near the gecko and "encourage it in". This would work brilliantly if the gecko had no legs or was already dead.
There were a variety of humane methods suggested such as using egg shells, as the gecko sees them and thinks there is a predator nearby or spraying the area with chilli or pepper mixed with water. Or placing onions or garlic around the gecko's neighbourhood. Using such things would make us move out before the gecko. And besides, I was not interested in removing him with ingredients for bolognese.
It seemed the most effective way of catching these creatures is with sticky glue paper. There is something in the glue that attracts insects so when they get stuck the gecko wanders onto the paper too and also gets stuck. Wikihow said it is an effective method but not terribly nice as if you don't check the papers regularly the gecko can get caught and then starve to death. It did advise that you can remove the gecko by pouring vegetable oil on it and that loosens the adhesive from their feet. So it is sort of humane with a little bit of torture as well. I assume just to punish the gecko for its nerve.
I discussed this method with my unchivalrous husband. He refused to help me with it as he thought it cruel. The transcript as follows:
Me: I think we should use these sticky glue pads. Only way we will definitely catch it. But I am squeamish so need your help to get it off the glue pad.
Him: I am not doing it. Imagine if it gets caught early in the night. It will suffer until morning before we can let it go. How would you like it if you got stuck on a sticky mat? What would you do?
Me: I dunno. Wait till someone arrives with vegetable oil. Besides when would I ever get stuck on a sticky mat?
Him: Well, I wouldn't wait. I would be so scared I would be wriggling and writhing and pooing myself in fear
Me: Well, you did that on the last day of our holiday in Vietnam so what's the big deal?
Him: I am not helping you
Me: What good are you?
I then Googled glue mats and the first thing that came up was an article by PETA entitled "How Glue Pads Ruined by Childhood" with an accompanying photo of a sticky mat with a mouse, two cockroaches and two sparrows stuck to it. Admittedly I was rather sickened.
Yes yes, this is why I am not a vegetarian. I like the meat but am not prepared to butcher it myself. I want the vermin out of my house but am not prepared to pick up the mousetrap with the decapitated mouse in it myself. I need (sorry to say it ladies) a man to do it for me. And unfortunately I don't know any.
So, after all my shouting, swearing and posturing. I decided to go the namby pamby route. I am trying the egg shells. So much for wanting blood!
On Sunday however, we had a bit of good fortune. While talking to my Mum on Facetime I noticed a very big gecko scuttling along the wall heading back to the kitchen. I dropped the phone thinking this is it, we are going to get that fridge dweller. Between the four of us we managed to catch him. It did involve whacking him with a broom. Chasing him around the floor and the walls and then finally my husband caught him in a Tupperware box. I was still keen to throw him out of the window (21 floors) but my husband who is looking at me increasingly with doubt as to whether he did the right thing by marrying an axe murderer said he would put him outside in the grass.
Anyway, you cannot imagine the joy of knowing he was gone. I still laid out the egg shells that night as a warning to any other interlopers and went to bed happy knowing I would not be scrubbing black poo off the kitchen surfaces.
I woke on Monday morning to find the egg shells carefully moved aside and three poos on the kitchen surfaces.
I have decided to get the sticky glue mats, as cruel as they are. I did suggest to my husband that if we did catch one and you didn't have time to pour vegetable oil on it and carefully prise it off before you go to work, we could put the mat face down and I can drive over it with the car then at least its death will be quick and painful. I don't want it to starve to death. I am not a monster!
This whole experience has made me realise that I am unfortunately not a murderer as much as I really want to be. I really want to kill that gecko but I just don't have the cojones to do it. I am going to get the sticky mat and perhaps wait until my in-laws arrive in a few weeks. They live in the English countryside so are used to equatorial geckos. If we happen to catch one while they are here. I will feign illness and stay in bed and they will get rid of it for me because they are nice. Unfortunately, I think they read my blog so perhaps I shouldn't have said any of that.
Wow! That was over 2000 words on my gecko. Perhaps I should read him this blog post. He might leave of his own accord.
