i woke up early this morning, alone in my dorm room at our teachers college, a bit startled by an unusual scratchy crunching noise not unlike the sound of a cautious footfall on a dry leaf. i was pretty sure the sound was coming from inside, perhaps near the corner of the room. upon investigation, i discovered something quite magical. here in uganda, i have encountered cockroaches and geckos aplenty, but this morning i bore witness to the hilarious predatory union of the two. my friend the gecko was clinging to the wall behind a neighboring bed with his little gray-green jaw clamped down tightly on the head of an enormous cockroach. as if this wasn't enough to get me excited, the gecko was "jump-chomping" on his prey's miserable face - leaving his back feet planted on the wall, he would raise his front feet, torso, and roach-filled maw up in the air and, with all the gecko force he could muster, let it come crashing down in one crunchy, heroic bite.i have beaten, burned, drowned, eaten (inadvertently), and/or crushed many cockroaches in my day, only to see them later run away, after i believed they were long dead, to have another 1000 babies in my cupboard. based on such experience, i was convinced this wretched beast before me was still very much alive, perhaps merely playing along with the gecko, mildly inconvenienced in the same way you or i might feel when we've been roped into a conversation we never wanted in the first place with a person who does not respond predictably to standard and widely understood social cues. sure enough, i left the two of them alone for a minute to put my camera away and i returned to find only the gecko remaining. the cockroach was nowhere in sight, presumably back on task being filthy somewhere dark. apparently, our young gecko finally got the hint.
