gecko | Notes on a Spanish Valley

I disturbed this guy when I opened the kitchen gate. He ran along the wall and hid behind the wheelie bin. He was only one inch long and the palest of cream colours. Beautiful. When I returned with my camera he was still in the same place. After that there followed a small dance of to-ing and fro-ing as he tried to get out of my way and I tried to get a second photograph. I stopped trying, in the end, because I didn’t want to frighten him to death. A family of geckos lives in our gas bottle store. We have no mains gas here so use huge 35kg tall blue bottles of propano, propane, which are kept in a locked cage. I guess he’s the baby of the family.
5 to remember
lo abrí – I opened it
la puerta de la cocina – kitchen gate
el contenedor de basura con ruedas – wheelie bin
pálido/a – pale
crema – cream [the colour]

We were sitting in the shade under the pergola, enjoying a late morning cafelito and agua, watching a ‘bootcut’ eagle circling over the olive grove on the hilltop opposite. He was alone, but was still calling, kli-kli-kli, when suddenly there was a different call. Click on the video below to listen…

It was a gecko, hidden somewhere in the honeysuckle and jasmine which climb up from plant pots, through the rough roof of brezo de mimbre [wicker roofing] into the sunshine. The geckos are so difficult to spot, so shy. We know they get into the house through the air bricks. D found one two days ago behind the fridge. Possibly this is why our house is relatively bug-free, for saying we live in the middle of the country.
Seeing or hearing a gecko is always a treat.
5 to remember
la sombra – shade
de enfrente – opposite
solo/a – alone
las macetas – plant pots
el video – video