Cleaning up the apartment today, I moved my laundry basket and found this:
It’s a gecko, what most locals call a 壁虎 bíhǔ, and they used to be a common sight when I was living in a courtyard many years back. But here’s the thing... I just got back from a trip to Southeast Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, Laos) and I didn’t check my luggage. The lizard was near the laundry. Since I don’t really know my lizards that well, I had an irrational fear that my dirty travel clothes had introduced some exotic species into the Beijing ecosystem.
But first things first: before I got into the international import ramifications of my discovery, my initial problem was what to do with the gecko. Catch it? Leave it be? Buy car insurance?