Finally Spotted

For two years I have looked out the sixth floor window into our swamp backyard and seen absolutely no swamp creatures. Impossible! Something has to live out there, so I've always kept glancing hopefully.

And then today happened. I glanced out the window while walking to the printer and saw some movement. There on the wooden-pole path, something was crawling! I got very excited and called my Thai co-worker over. However, in my excitement, all I could say was, "Look! There's a creature! It's...It's...next to the blue boat...on the path you walk out to the little house..." It took her (and me) a while but finally she saw it.

A small monitor lizard, she said it was. "If someone from eastern Thailand was here, they would go catch it and cook it up for dinner." We both laughed, knowing that, while she was joking, there was a lot of truth to her statement too.

"Do you think it will stay there if I go down to take a picture?" I asked. We decided it was worth a try. I took a couple from the sixth floor, then from the third, then from the second, and I finally made it outside. As soon as he saw the movement at the door, he slid into the water and swam off.

The water, by the way, is under the green stuff below the poles. You can always tell if a creature (like this one) has come out of the water because they are covered in the little green leaves that grow on top of the water.