West Indian Houses

~Giggling and applauding~

I was one of those statesiders who came here fixated on keeping lizards out of the house -- was always poking at folks to close the door quickly, etc. Finally a friend took me sqaurely by the shoulders, stared deeply into my eyes and said, "LIZARDS HAPPEN. Stop resisting this reality now and you'll be a lot happier." He was right -- I learned to be fond of the little buggers for the great work they did keeping the mosquitos at bay. Never did learn to take the random lizard poo in the tub in stride, though.

Since we replaced windows and screens, and did the roof upgrade I talked about in the building codes post, the number of outside visitors that get in (which included millipedes, centipedes, and a few small bats) has dropped off to almost none. It seems the 8" area at which the roof beams met the outer walls and roof panels was a lizard superhighway! Using this open space, the little buggars could travel the entire perimeter of the house and then squeeze down through any of a number of gaps between the beams and the inner and outer walls, or the window and door wall frames. I swear we found a half-pound of lizard egg shells resting on top of the frame when they ripped out one of the old door walls!

Now that the entire area between the top oif the outer walls and the top of the roof beams is solid concrete, the only lizards we've seen in the house are the ones that have run in the front door when I don't get my wheelchair over the door jam quick enough.

As Dave Barry would say...Random Lizard Poo would be a good name for a rock band! 😉