A Gecko Died a Terrible Death and I Feel Awful About It

Spectra accidentally killed a gecko yesterday. She tried to make a copy but the machine jammed. I happened to be in the office that morning so the task of un-jamming it fell to me. After wrestling with various doors and components for a few minutes I finally got the offending piece of paper out. On it, with the lower 20% a gelatinous smear and the upper 80% perfectly intact, was a gecko. It wasn't twitching or clinging to life. His eyes were closed and, with that little “grin” that a gecko's mouth naturally forms, he looked serene. There was a scramble of little gecko footprints captured in ink around the gelatinous remains of his lower half that captured his struggle to live in a situation beyond his comprehension.

Imagine either resting or trying to find something to eat in a little building. It’s dark and quiet when all of the sudden all hell breaks loose. There’s a cacophony of noise coming from every direction, the temperature of the room spikes into a furnace, the floor quickly moves and before you have a chance to sort out a path to safety your legs have been liquidated and your pelvis grinds the hell you’re in to a halt. Somewhere near the end of that you die. One can belittle the intelligence or emotional capacity of that gecko but the flurry of footprints is a testament to the fact he wanted to live and his death was gruesome and terrifying.

In my estimation the word "accident" doesn't do the incident justice. It's beyond that. It's what you'd call someone getting struck by debris flung from a tornado or being washed away by a rogue wave. I guess we call those acts of God and I suppose that captures it as well as it can be. It's beyond intention, beyond accidents, it's a byproduct of the nature of things or, perhaps, it is the nature of things. Spectra teared up and I was in something just shy of shock.

"What do I do with him?" I asked holding the piece of paper the gecko had become one with.

"If I were him I'd want to be put on the Earth. That’s what I would want if I were a gecko." Spectra responded.

At that moment P'Daeng walked in. We explained what happened and I asked her what I should do with him.

"You return him to the Earth where he can be useful," she said without hesitation.

I looked at the serene little guy. "Just put him on the ground?"

"Yes," P'Daeng replied. "If he were a cat or dog we'd bury him but he's small. Just find a spot and put him down."

I didn't like it but I didn't have a better idea either. So I went outside and behind P'Daeng's spirit house at the base of a tree I found a little nook nestled between roots. I took him off the paper and placed him there and then spent a minute with him before walking home. I wasn’t just sad, I was frazzled and existentially unsettled. I couldn't stand the idea of that gecko's death, especially in that fashion, being meaningless.

I wrote and rewrote several philosophical tangents, most of which were related to Buddhist principles, hoping to make it meaningful but I cut them all because they obscured the fact that a gecko died and more than anything I felt bad it. I want to make it meaningful but I don’t know that I can. If I were poet I’d write a poem, if I were a painter I’d paint, if I were a musician I’d write a song. I’m none of those things. I’m whatever this is.

When I got home Kaonashi and I went to our spirit house to pray. I explained what happened and attempted to convey how sorrowful Spectra and I both were. If there’s a gecko spirit I hoped it either heard me or the other spirits would convey our condolences. Then over the course of about 30 hours I wrote and rewrote this in various states of emotional upheaval and, ultimately, inebriation.

Here’s the part where I normally attempt to bend this little story into something meaningful by looping back to an element or idea I referenced near the beginning. That little structural gimmick makes something feel like there’s a greater lesson to be gleaned even when there isn’t. I’m not doing that because there are no lessons to be learned. A gecko died a gruesome death I wouldn’t wish on anything or anyone. If he had a spirit, or whatever you want to call an attachment to a metaphysical self, I pray for its contentment.

The end.

The picture I now associate with the gecko.