On Prince StreetHere in Brunswick, Georgia, it is porch season. At last, the azaleas and the redbud trees and the dogwood draped in Spanish moss are in bloom, and, unless the no-see-ums chase us inside, it is warm enough to sit on the porch. We have a south-facing porch here on Prince Street, so it is possible to follow the sun from one side to the other throughout the day.
Growing lazy in my own patch of sunlight, I watch two geckos come up the porch steps. First a nice-sized green one darts over the brick, and then a tiny brown one skitters past him. Up the steps, up and down the porch post, and then across the grass green floorboards to park himself inches from my feet. There he methodically laps up the silver-winged insects emerging from between the boards.
I am mesmerized by his effortless consumption. With quick jabs of his head, he picks the creatures off one by one, and while I know I should call for Tom at once, any sound, any movement, would scare the little brown gecko from his feast. In less than minute all of them – maybe twenty – are swallowed whole. Beyond the porch, against the sunlight, silver wings of a dozen or so escapees flutter away.
When I go into the house, I still don’t say the word out loud, but speak instead of silver wings and the gecko. My practical husband understands at once that he must crawl under the house to check the foundation, to capture a specimen or two in a plastic paint jug, to talk to our neighbors about the life cycle of termites. Later, when he witnesses whole multitudes taking wing from tree roots in other neighborhoods, he learns they came not from the house’s foundation, but from the ancient oaks in front of the house. Not that such knowledge consoles him.
I would like to offer some Annie Dillard-like wisdom from my observation of the termites and the gecko, but the best I have is that there is beauty in the bizarre and you might not have to go far to find it. Perhaps in my July class, “Confabulation,” we will capture these extremes in new and interesting ways.
Growing lazy in my own patch of sunlight, I watch two geckos come up the porch steps. First a nice-sized green one darts over the brick, and then a tiny brown one skitters past him. Up the steps, up and down the porch post, and then across the grass green floorboards to park himself inches from my feet. There he methodically laps up the silver-winged insects emerging from between the boards.
I am mesmerized by his effortless consumption. With quick jabs of his head, he picks the creatures off one by one, and while I know I should call for Tom at once, any sound, any movement, would scare the little brown gecko from his feast. In less than minute all of them – maybe twenty – are swallowed whole. Beyond the porch, against the sunlight, silver wings of a dozen or so escapees flutter away.
When I go into the house, I still don’t say the word out loud, but speak instead of silver wings and the gecko. My practical husband understands at once that he must crawl under the house to check the foundation, to capture a specimen or two in a plastic paint jug, to talk to our neighbors about the life cycle of termites. Later, when he witnesses whole multitudes taking wing from tree roots in other neighborhoods, he learns they came not from the house’s foundation, but from the ancient oaks in front of the house. Not that such knowledge consoles him.
I would like to offer some Annie Dillard-like wisdom from my observation of the termites and the gecko, but the best I have is that there is beauty in the bizarre and you might not have to go far to find it. Perhaps in my July class, “Confabulation,” we will capture these extremes in new and interesting ways.
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