Surprise Visitor From Three Days Ago

Paint fumes have filled the computer lab as of late. The workers in charge of painting the walls a new color made quick work of most of the space over two days, and had put down a nice new coat of blue-gray by Friday of last week, but today was the day that I had to move a few things around in the lab, and I prepared myself by going into the small back room which typically houses most of our least-used equipment. That room, however, was virtually empty. No computers. No boxes full of cables and cobwebs. Nothing of the sort.

Save for two visitors. One was a common housefly that had landed on the still-wet paint. It was stuck pretty good there on the top shelf and I can only figure it had about an hour's worth of flapping before it succumbed to exhaustion and its fate.

Our second visitor met the same demise apparently. A poor hapless gecko wandered from the window onto the surface of the same wooden shelf (maybe in an effort to track down the flapping fly?) and expired right where he stepped. I felt bad for both of them, but more for the gecko. I then felt very bad for me.

I had a broom in my hand, one made from palm fronds that is wrapped into a bundle that will fit nicely into the palm of your hand. There is no broom handle so it is just the wisps of fronds that does the work for you. I took that and figured it was better to use it than my hand to push the gecko off the shelf. It was stuck there for a reason though, and he or she had been in place for a good few days unfortunately. My initial swipe at the creature resulted in about 60% of it coming off the shelf - mostly the front and upper half of it, plus the tail.

Oh did I see and smell the error of my ways. I had just planted an odor bomb in a very small room where I was going to be placing most of the lab's equipment inside. It was not the most carefully planned of missions.

After keeping my wits and my lunch, I decided on letting the remnants stay on the shelf to desiccate a bit and make a straight line out the door with the half that I did manage to dislodge all the while keeping my breath held tightly inside. The room still smells terrible, but the computers and monitors are safely stored in the back room away from the sanding that is going to be occurring tomorrow. You live and learn in Ghana.