does switching to geico really save you 15% on car insurance?

"Oh. My. God." I yelled as I stood in the doorway of our bedroom.

"What?"  Joey replied from downstairs.

"Ohmygodohmygodohmygod there is a lizard on the wall!" I screamed, frozen in fear as I stared at the eight-inch long gecko on the wall next to my bed.

"What?!"

"Get the F*** up here there is a Fing lizard on the wall!"

So Joey bounded up the steps - we agreed I would go downstairs to get something to catch it and he would watch it to make sure it didn't move.  I ran downstairs, and after making my way through the iron gate at the bottom grabbed my camera, an empty 2L Aquafina bottle, a piece of paper and a juice glass.  When I returned the gecko was nowhere in sight.

"Where'd it go?" I asked Joey as he is casually searching the curtains.

"I don't know - it ran away." 

"There is a gecko loose in our bedroom?!"  I'm frantic, and at this point I'm standing on top of our bed in my sheer little black robe clutching my camera, the water bottle, the paper and the glass. 

Did I mention its 2:30 am?  George decided he needed water around 1:30 and after about half an hour of listening to him scratch at the door we finally acquiesed and decided we might as well have some tea.  It was when I returend upstairs with my teacup that I made this lovely discovery. 

"That's what you brought me to catch it?" Joey asked me, incredulously, while trying desparately not to laugh.

"What the hell do you expect me to bring you?  I grew up in Iowa and I find a Fing lizard on the wall and you think I'm going to know how to catch the Fing thing?" Yes, I have a potty mouth.  And it was in full swing at 2:30 am with a lizard on the wall in my bedroom.  Or rather a lizard running loose in my bedroom.  "And its not funny!"

Joey is now laughing hysterically, while I am just hysterical.  "Get it! Where'd it go?!  Get the Fing thing!"

He points to the window and says that it probably went out this little hole and that he looked everywhere and can't find it - tells me this story about how even the nicest hotel rooms in Hawaii get lizards in there all the time and that its no big deal - they eat mosquitos.

Clearly I am not convinced.  I go downstairs and come back up with the step ladder.  Joey searches for another fifteen minutes (meanwhile our entire pack of three worthless dogs is hiding under the bed, probably more due to me freaking out than the lizard), and finally declares the search over.  Relunctantly, after checking under the blankets of course, I crawl back into bed.  Joey looks over and asks "Will you turn out the lights?"

"Hell no."

"Some of them?  Please?"

So I turned off all the overhead lights, but left my lamp on.  I read for the next few hours (and glancing to the wall every few minutes) until I was so tired I finally had no choice but to fall asleep. 

The next day I told our sponsor, Ibrahim, an American FSO who is originally from Nigeria, that we found a lizard on the wall in our bedroom.  He responded knowingly in his sing-song Nigerian accent, "Oh a wall gecko!  Those are little things - they won't hurt you!  Sometimes they'll crawl on your face at night while you're sleeping and leave a little scratch, but otherwise you'll never know they're there."

Oh I'll know.