September 11, 2007
I heard the first Gecko call of Spring last night…
Spring starts in September in Australia… so temperatures are starting to warm up… and geckos… being cold blooded reptilian creatures… are starting to become more active.
If you haven’t heard a gecko’s call… the nyuk, nyuk, nyuk sound that they make to communicate… closely resembles that of Curly from the Three Stooges…
I really like geckos… they are cute little guys… and they do help to keep the bug and spider population down…
Now geckos are also talented creatures… and are well renowned for their amazing ability to adhere to a wide array of surfaces and gradients. They can scale sheer vertical walls… even those made of glass… and they can even walk on ceilings.
The reason they can do so is pretty amazing… bear with the nerdspeak… but a gecko’s foot has toepads consisting of about half a million setae… which are bristle-like hairs made of keratin. Each of these fine hairs has hundreds of even smaller projections of nanoscale diameters called spatulae protruding from their ends.
While there were many hypotheses relating to the origin of their stick-to-it-iveness… such as suction… friction… and electrostatic forces… it was only recently discovered that the adhesion was due to particular forces of attraction known as “van der Waals” interactions… that are created between the spatulae and the particular surface…
This should not be confused with Van der Beek’s interactions, which mostly occurred in the vicinity of Dawson’s Creek.
Now I have that infernal “I Don’t Want To Wait…” theme song in my head… Dammit!
Anyway… Van der Waals interactions are intermolecular forces created by induced polarizations of molecules. In the case of gecko feet… the spatulae are so small… and get so close to the tiny imperfections on any surface… that van der Waals forces created by the millions of spatulae on a single gecko foot can produce an adhesion force of close to one kilogram per 100 square millimetres… or 14 lbs per square inch…
Therefore if a typical mature 70 gram gecko… had every one of its spatulae in contact with a surface… it would be capable of holding aloft a weight of over 130 kg… heavier than most humans…
Which is quite astonishing really… and would be interesting to test… subject to finding a willing and consenting gecko…
But here endeth the science lesson… because that is not the point of my story…
The first gecko call of Spring reminded me of a night about six months ago…
I was crossing my living room floor in the dark… turning lights off in readiness to go to bed… when I accidentally trod on… and regrettably killed… a small gecko…
He looked a little bit like this guy…
I was… of course… devastated…
With my affinity for geckos, I couldn’t simply dispose of him in the trash… and toilet flushing is pretty much reserved for aquatic life forms… such as goldfish… turtles… and guinea pigs… and believe me… I lost a LOT of guinea pigs over the years… Perhaps they prefer salt water? I don’t know… I’ll have to look that up…
So instead, I went to the kitchen… emptied a matchbox… and buried him in a small… but emotional ceremony… in the backyard…
Next day, I was telling the story to my flatmate Geezer… and he relayed a similar story from several nights prior… where he was shutting up the house… and went to close the front door…
But the door wouldn’t close properly… and when he opened it… he saw that he had inadvertently crushed a gecko between the door and the trim… I’m not sure he provided the same degree of burial service… but it was clear that he felt remorseful… so I let it slide…
Now in the midst of any tragedy… laughter is often the best medicine to break the malaise…
I made the observation that the other geckos around the house would probably become terrified… with all of their little kinfolk vanishing around them… like a horror movie…
So I set the challenge of coming up with a movie title that would do the situation justice…
Within a few minutes I had come up with “House of Gecks”… (“House of Wax”)… but was sure I could do better…
I then came up with “The Gecks Files”… (“The X-Files”)… but still wasn’t happy…
But finally settled upon “The Gecksorcist”… (“The Exorcist”)… nice… I know…
And what did Geezer come up with?
“Bend it like Geckham”… (“Bend it Like Beckham”)…
I quietly explained that “Bend it Like Beckham” was far from being a horror, supernatural, or even mildly frightening movie… in fact it is far less evil than Dawson’s Creek…
He then tried feebly to justify it by saying that the gecko was kind of in a curved position when the incident occurred…
It was then I knew… sadly… that the game was over… ruined forever…
Amateurs… what are you gonna do…
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