Kerala and Lake Kumarakom – The Creature

“It looked…kind of… like…this.”

I put the pencil down and showed the front desk worker at Lake Kumarakom Resort my rough depiction of “guess the animal that was in Michelle’s room earlier.”

Thankfully he drew version 2.0.

“Did it look like this?”

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t a rat.”

“Ok – what about this?”

“That looks more like it. What is it?”

Google images revealed that what I’d seen that morning was possibly a grey skink, aka an Arana lizard. It looked kind of like this little guy, although not exactly:

My "roommate" looked kind of like this

Assured that they weren’t poisonous, I returned to my room to relax a bit.

You know the noise the smoke detector makes when it runs out of batteries?

That's the noise I heard when I went to grab something from my purse.

Guess which one I drew??!

Luckily I had recently ordered room service, so I knew help would be on the way soon. I sat still as a log until I heard a knock on the door.

I ushered the resort employee in and explained the situation. He picked up my purse and carefully went through it, finding nothing. He searched around all the curtains, carefully looking in each pleat, coming up empty.

Then I saw it, perched at the top of the curtain, debating a jump to the man’s head.

I squealed and he placed his hand on his head, averting the danger.

Pest control showed up with two long, skinny sticks. Not Raid, not poison - sticks.

As I learned over the next squealing minute of drama, there is some type of tree that grows a substance at the end of the branch that acts like a glue. This “glue” is so sticky it traps pests, such as lizards and rodents.

Once captured, the lizard was placed outside and I was informed that I could “sleep safely now.”

It's at this point, as I'm writing about this poor lizard, or rat, or mouse, or whatever it was, trapped in my room all day, that I realize I’ve given way too much thought to this particular creature. I guess this points to the broader issues of development, loss of wild habitations, deforestation, overdevelopment, etc. Man tries to coexist with the rest of God’s creation and sometimes helps yet sometimes hurts.

Any interesting lizard or creature stories from your vacations? I’d be happy to hear them!