He's Dead!!!

Yesterday, I stepped on a rubber band. I was walking from the living room, over the hard "wood" floor of the hallway, and into the office to get out a piece of paper and a pen. We were sitting down after dinner to iron out our family budget. That's when I stepped on the rubber band. As I entered the office it hit me. When was the last time I saw a rubber band around this place. I couldn't remember. But what I did remember seeing recently was a gecko running across the living room floor out from under a box that I was picking up to put away, and under the couch. I had decided at that point that I would be wearing flip flops around the house until winter, a taboo sight to me, as everyone who enters my house must take off their shoes before stepping foot on my precious carpet. (Oh, and I like people to feel comfortable, which is how the rule originated.) Anyway, I digress.

There was, in my house, a gecko on the loose, and I had just stepped on something that resembled the feeling of a tiny gecko beneath my foot. I turned to look, and that's when I saw it. Was it frozen in fear? Had I managed to defeat the gecko with one accidental step to its tiny body? No. I had mearly broken its leg, and it was beginning to hobble towards my guest room. I couldn't let it get in there. There were so many things on the floor in there that it would surely surprise me on a day when I was crawling around, trying to pick up my mess. That's when I shrieked.

Apparently this is not a sound of distress recognizable yet to my new husband, so when that didn't work, I yelled, "Mitch, there's a gecko, come kill it." That worked out better for me, and my husband came to the rescue, or at least I thought he did. In true Mitch fashion, he starred at the gecko, trying to determine his best course of action, while the little devil crawled closer and closer to my guest room, and into the safety of all the chaos. I finally snapped him out of his trance and said, "Get a cup or get some toilet paper. I don't care how you get him, but do it now!" He grabbed the toilet paper, and then turned into the bathroom where I thought he was going to give the cretin a proper burial down the toilet. I ran to grab my camera, and got back just in time to find out that Mitch had ended the suffering of this beast by crushing him between his thumb and his index finger. I asked him if he knew for sure that the gecko was dead. I asked him over and over again until he finally threatened to show me the innards of the little guy.

That's when I began to feel sorry for him. But not sorry enough. I ran into the living room and declared at the top of my lungs that any gecko choosing to remain in MY house would surely meet the same fate, then Mitch went into the office to get the paper and pen that I forgot.