Of cicak and birthday

Here's something that I wrote three years ago on my 27th birthday. I wrote it and then sent it to a bunch of friends and forgot all about it and then found it again just now on the Internet.

Btw, for the benefit of foreigners reading this, cicak is gecko in Bahasa.

I want to tell you abt what happened on the morning of my birthday, which is today.
This morning i closed the gate. Not that it was my first time closing a gate, but this gate, our house gate is the sliding type and is quite heavy. It's rather difficult to push and when you do succeed, the momentum is quite substantial.

Anyway, as I was closing the gate, I heard a small shriek. Like "eek!"

It was a cicak. It was hiding at the edge of the gate and didn't manage to escpe in time when I slammed the gate shut. It got cut in two.

I went "shit!" I just killed somebody on my birthday. Mmg la it was just a cicak but you have to understand that I'm not the type who kills animals except the occassional mosquitoes. Itupun kalau those mosquitoes tak beredar lepas diberi amaran sebanyak tiga kali supaya membatalkan perhimpunan.

The cicak had its innards becoming 'outtards' and gooey stuff was sticking to the gate. The front half of the cicak tried to climb away but couldn't bcos its limp body was sticking to the gate in halves bcos of gooey stuff (the back half wasnt moving). It could only wave its hands around.
I thought this is horrible! I wanted to give it CPR but i was afraid that thing might go straight into my mouth. So I went straight into the house instead while trying to delete this particular image from my head like what you are probably trying to do now.

It didn't end there. Half an hour later I came back to check on the cicak again. to my horror, it was still breathing! I could see the lungs moving bcos they were exposed. The cicak was going through a slow, excruciating death and by now the image of the dying cicak is already pressed indelibly within my subconscious.

Abt an hour later when I was pretty sure it had died, jenazahnya dikebumikan di dlm tong sampah berdekatan. I wonder how many cicaks at my house died that way.

Happy Birthday to me.