An open zoo - beasties and crawlies in your own home

Why does there seem to be a distinct absence of flies in Singapore?
You'd think that this tropical, steamy island would be a breeding ground for them, it certainly is when it comes to mosquitos and the signs at building sites on the importance of eradicating stagnant water cannot be missed. However I've only spotted a couple here and there; a couple of weeks back there were two lazily buzzing around my thonged right foot whilst I waited in line for a taxi. Maybe they were waiting too, after all, with all that flapping of wings, you'd get pretty tired here; why not take a taxi instead?

Maybe there really is a small population, maybe there's a mysterious shortage. Maybe they have been picked off by a supremely efficient predator or most likely they are all feasting on some fetid, festering garbage heap in the less populated parts of the island. Who knows?

In this first week of moving into our new place, we've been visited by geckos, which is something you don't see too often in the home-counties of the UK.




 The little lizards seem to be the good-guys here, living off the numerous slugs, bugs and roaches that linger in dark alleyways. Maybe they're the ones eating the flies, but how would you catch a fly if you're bound to the ground and have no chameleon-styled tongue? The ones that found their way into our kitchen (our door-frames are not the best fitted. The builders left a good centimetre gap either side, probably for ventilation health and safety purposes) are five to eight centimetres in length, pale green almost yellow in colour and have big brown eyes. It almost sounds adorable, doesn't it?

They flick about, with a distinct pad pad pad of their sticky-toed feet and, having tried to catch them, are pretty nippy over short distances. So far, I have evicted two, one day after the other, although maybe i didn't do a good enough job of showing the first to greener pastures and he just wandered straight back on in, like a drunk cowboy who has been turfed out through the still-swinging saloon doors. Then again, the process wasn't so difficult, they are reasonably cute little dudes and it's not so much of a hardship chasing them with a tupperware cup in my hand.

In addition to the gecko invasion of my kitchen, I stumbled across a fat cockroach in the door way of the regional tax manager's office this morning, and reacted with typically new-expat revulsion. Good job he's out of town travelling this week. The beasty was a good three centimetres long and two centimetres wide, proudly lying on it's back, displaying its cockroach-brown glory, crossing all it's stick-like arms and legs. Dead. The dessicating insect lay there for a good couple of hours before magically disappearing.
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