It started with the lizard who lives behind my bookshelf. He’s been there for awhile. He’s not a gecko…he’s too big. He can also change colours which is kind of cool. I was worried for him once when he fell off the ceiling and fell twelve feet to land on my tiled floor. But it seems he’s a tough little sucker, and he was back into hiding by the time I got up to see if I had something to clean up. I watched him eat a moth last night and he’s welcome to as many mosquitos as he can stomach. He tends to stay on his side of the room and I on mine. As long as we can keep that arrangement, I’m okay with sharing my personal space with him. He doesn’t say much and he doesn’t call me pingping…which is the current mocking name the guys are using on each other (and me) here at the house. I have no idea where it came from. Frankly…neither do they.

As a side note, the only time I got angry with a lizard/gecko was when one fell off of my ceiling in my old house and landed on the open magazine I was reading on my bed. Scared the daylights out of me. I warned him if he did it again, we’d be having a little lizard funeral. He actually did do it again, but being that I’m a missionary and all, I had mercy and I just caught him in a plastic margarine container and threw him out the back door.

The next critter to come visiting was this parrot. He showed up in the back yard. He’s pretty young…I’m not even sure wether he can fly or not. He just strutted back and forth on a wooden saw horse we have. I took him some bread (okay…a lot of bread. They guys laughed at me…) and he ate it out of my hand. He is also pretty cool. We think he must belong to someone in the neighbourhood because he seems fairly tame. Jesus tried to get him to stand on his fingers, but a quick hiss and an attempt to bite Jesus’ finger off said that he wasn’t really looking for new friends.

 
Last night I went to get a drink of water and saw that our plastic clothes hamper was upside down with the garbage can on top of it. That seemed unusual (more than normal anyhow). I looked closer and saw that the guys had caught our little friend and made him a comfortable little house for the night. They said it was so he didn’t get eaten by any cats. He seemed happy enough. This morning we returned him to his owner. Interesting…in Canada we find stray dogs or cats. Here…it’s stray parrots…

Finally last night, as I was talking to one of the guys in the kitchen, I turned and watched a huge frog hop behind the fridge. Seriously. A big frog.

This doesn’t happen in Saskatchewan.