On the drive to work one morning, I realized right around the Isabella Holmes Bridge that a little gecko had attached himself to my windshield, and was holding on for dear life as I sped down the highway.
"Hold on little buddy. Just hold on. When I get to the office I'll get you to a nice flower bed, safe and sound. You'll have quite a survival story to tell everyone."
I found myself rooting for him, out loud by the time I got to Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd and Kerr Avenue. He was holding so still, so determined to not lose his grip. I couldn't take my eyes off him…he was an inspiration! I mean, 65 MPH is fast for a human, but I can't imagine how fast it feels if you're a tiny little lizard! (Yes, that's right…submit to the warped rules of Physics which live in my head.)
Every once and a while I would see him lose his grip on one side, and his little limb would flap in the air. But then he'd regain his grip, and we'd be going strong again!
We made it all the way to my office on New Centre Drive. I was so excited, so stunned that he held on that long.
I put my little Hyundai (yes, that's right…a Hyundai) in park, grabbed my purse and keys out of the car, and scurried to the windshield to release my little buddy into the feral environment of the New Centre Drive office park. (Oh yeah, it's a jungle out there, you don't even know. There's a frog that plays chicken with me every morning in the parking lot…he thinks he owns the place, you should see his fat little belly jiggling…wait, that's a story for another rambling blog…back on track…)
I rushed to the windshield, and as my fingers touched his tiny body I knew something was wrong. He was stiff, and didn't flinch when he saw me coming toward him.
He was dead.
He was dead, and riggormortis had taken over, allowing his little toes to become hardened around the wiper blades. That's how he was able to hold on for so long. It wasn't determination. It wasn't strength. It was death.
This whole car ride I had been pulling for him, rooting for him. If there were other people in the car, I would have been taking bets on how long he'd survive the ride…that's how much faith I had in him.
And that was the day the little gecko taught me that sometimes, when we think something is holding steady, something is remaining still in order to survive. Sometimes we start to think that lack of movement is a strategy for survival. But that's not always the case.
Sometimes, when something isn't moving, it's simply because it's dead. There is no more life in it. And instead of getting to release it into the wild, you must recognize that it will not ever breathe again, and you bury it below the dirt, along with all the other dead things of this world.
