About the Common House Lizard & how it brings out the worst in little boys

The house lizard in my younger days was a ready source of amusement and convenient prop for naughty tricks. Lizards were always to be found in plenty in all the houses we have lived in till now. The earliest instance of a predator stalking its prey that I have seen must have been the lizard sneaking up on its prey (bugs, flies, moths, etc.) with all the finesse and stealth of a natural little hunter. As I remember though, the lizard was seen as something of a pest in our society. This must have something to do with its ‘detachable’ tail falling down upon unsuspecting people and people’s food, and sometimes even the whole lizard spiraling down onto least-prepared human presence. To top it, the lizard was also viewed with suspicion – it was rumoured that killing a lizard would bring bad luck, and of course, we all shared in the uneasy though misplaced idea that a lizard coming into contact with your food would poison it.

So all in all, the lizard was fair game for me and my friends when we were little. To be sure we could not kill it but we could conjure up all sorts of devilish mischief designed to leave it half, but not fully dead. The simplest trick was this.

Step 1: Get hold of a broom with a long handle, and search out the house walls for prime lizzy specimens. Note: Lizards are found in plenty under tube lights and bulb holders where they wait patiently for the moths to show up for the ‘grand illumination’.

Step 2: After target acquisition, creep up on the lizzies with your broom and give that section of the wall a god ol’ sweep.

Step 3: “All fall down” and now the lizzies are at your mercy. Take hold of a tong (I used my mother’s old forceps) to pin down the lizard’s tail. Watch the lizard squirm and struggle, until it sheds its tail to flee.

Step 4: Long after the lizard’s gone, watch the still-squirming tail with fascination as it writhes in its own dance of detachment. (Taking the tail to show to your mother at this point, may not be the best way of attracting parental approval, as I found out painfully on one occasion).

An older cousin brother had his own novel idea for tormenting the lizard. He used a long stick, applied the top end with some lime (calcium hydroxide which is a white chemical used in preparing 'paan'), and raise it up to the wall where lizards would be seen. He did not have to wait long before an unsuspecting lizard crept close to the white end and thinking it to be a moth/ bug, tried to bite it. Lime can cause skin irritation and skin burning and the poor lizard after his attempt, would writhe in agony from the burn, fall down on the ground or just plain disappear from the scene as fast as it could run. We never did find out if the lizard would die from such a nasty trick.

Another fav trick was collecting lizard’s eggs (tiny white round replicas). Lizard laid eggs in plenty, and we would gather up the pretty, fragile-looking things with their soft shells and hide them away. Again after placing them in a hidden spot only to forget about them in the burst of other childish activities, we never did find out if the eggs ever hatched.

In our present house, lizards are rare and we hardly hear the loud ‘tik-tik’ as the lizards call out to each other in the night. Perhaps too many lizards have already provided game for mischievous, unmindful boys like my younger self. As I recollect my own pranks I feel sad somehow that I could not or did not care about nor understand how I was hurting a small creature.