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Published: September 20th 2014
Our little friend was too traumatized to take a picture of, but this is what he looked like “I don’t think I can do it”. I pulled the tweezers back from his little body. So tiny. Smaller than my pinky finger.
“Well, he has been here for two days and if we don’t get him off he is going to die.”
“Yeah, but what happens if I accidently rip the bottom of his stomach off? Can you imagine how much that is going to hurt?” I have no problems digging a calcification out of my eye with a pair of tweezers, but the line has to be drawn somewhere. Visuals of the poor baby gecko’s stomach slicing in half as I tried unsuccessfully to peel it off the sticky door hinge haunted me and shaking my head, I passed the tweezers to Sean, “you do the last bit, he is mostly unstuck now.” I would feel terrible if I murdered the little guy, even if it was in the spirit of assistance.
This baby gecko had to have the worst luck in the history of the world. We had noticed it a couple of days ago hanging out on the door hinge in our shower. What we didn’t realize at the time was that the gecko
The orchid where our little friend recovered. The plant next to it is a type of dessert plant that only needs to be watered once every 3 months was totally and completely stuck.
Clued to a sticky door hinge. And now our only option was to carefully peel its little body off with a pair of tweezers without killing it.
“Fine, you take the cup.” Sean passed me the cup... the plan was that once we got the gecko unstuck, it would fall into the cup we had perfectly positioned under its tiny body.
“Almost...” Sean and I held our breath as the baby gecko hissed and wriggled as Sean peeled the last part of his stomach from the door hinge.
Without ceremony, our little friend fell into the cup. Quickly, I walked out to the balcony and tipped him into the potting soil of our orchid. Sean and I crowed around to watch our little friend.
“He doesn’t look so good.”
“Well, he hasn’t eaten in two days.”
“I’ll go and find him an ant”. As Sean went searching, I watched our little friend. One of his legs wasn’t really working... he was kinda dragging it along and his reflexes were a little slow. I briefly considered giving him Arnica, but he was too small to get anything into him
Just outsideand I didn’t really want to traumatize him any further.
“I can’t find any ants.” Sean looked frustrated.
“No worries. I think we just have to leave him alone now anyway. He is going to have to figure it out on his own.”
When we checked on him an hour later, his leg seemed to have recovered and he was much more alert.
“I think he might live.”
“Hopefully. He is just a baby so it would be a shame for him to die”.
“We should head over to Trust Mart so you can take a look at a Chinese grocery store.” I said to Sean.
“Alright, can we walk there?”
I paused. Although I must admit that I love walking much more than driving, I had walked more in the last couple of weeks than I had all year. It felt like the back of my hamstrings were on fire.
Hoping that Sean was quietly enduring as much pain as I was, I said, “It’s about a 45 minute walk.”
“One way?”
“Yeah, about that.”
“It’s only about 40 degrees out today, so we should be able
We picked up a nice bottle of wine at the Trusty Walmartto do that.” Sean smiled at me.
“Yeah, what was it yesterday? About 52?” I shook my head. When you factored the humidity in, it was crazy hot no matter how you sliced it.
“So we could walk.”
I guess. Maybe I could push myself through the burning pain in my legs like I imagined all of those intense Nike athletes do. Another good solid 40 minutes of walking might even be good for me.
“There it is.” I forgot the pain in my legs for a minute to comment, “it still looks like a Trust Mart, that’s strange... I thought they were bought out by Walmart?”
“I don’t know...” Sean looked around as we entered the store, “that certainly looks like Walmart branding to me”.
Yes. Those little rollback arrows were everywhere. That was definitely a Walmart thing.
“So weird though. Half of the store is labelled Trust Mart and the other half is labelled as Walmart...” I paused and looked around. “I am not even sure what to call it.”
“How about Trusty Walmart?” Sean suggested and I laughed.
“It’s as good as anything...” my
One side of the honey station. It looks like those Chinese children are guarding it...I do not blame them!voice trailed off as I caught sight of something in the center of the produce section. I quickly made a 90 degree turn and headed straight for it.
“What is it?” Sean jogged to catch up.
“I think they have set up a honey station here.” I pointed, “look at all of those barrels of honey!”
Now, I don’t share this with everyone—but I have a terrible weakness for unpasteurized honey. It is perhaps one of the most wonderful things on the face of the planet not only in terms of health benefits, but also taste. Since renouncing all forms of refined sugar several years back, it has been my go-to whenever I want to add some sweetness without adding a risk of cancer. To see that the Chinese loved unpasteurized honey as much as I do (even enough to set up a large self serve station in the middle of the store) was enough to make my heart sing.
“I wonder if this is unpasteurized?” My Chinese reading was not good enough to recognize such high level characters. I picked up some of the bottles and investigated.
Unpasteurized honey does have a certain look
This side is for serious honey lovers only...to it. It’s not the nice and clear stuff you are used to picking up at the local grocery store. It is unfiltered and unheated so it’s the honey that has a ton of floaties in it. Those floaties are gold.
Excited, I found one with a bunch of hard chunks in it. “This is definitely unpasteurized”. I held it out to Sean, who after many such excursions with me was able to give it a quick glance and confirm that he also thought so.
“How exciting!” I exclaimed and hugged the honey to my chest. “Let’s pay and go home!”
I didn’t feel the burning of my legs on the way home, I was so excited.
After making myself a nice cup of tea with a heaping spoonful of honey, I sat outside on our balcony and sipped. It was perfect.
“Hey Sean,” I paused and looked closer at the orchid plant where we had left our little gecko, “I think our friend is feeling better because he is gone.”
Good for him. Off on another adventure. Taking another sip of my tea, I closed my eyes and wished our little friend well.
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