This past week in language school I learned the Taiwanese word for the house geckos which are so prevalant here (In the highly unlikely event any of you are interested, copy the chinese name 壁虎 here).
These guys are helpful in that they eat mosquitos. However, when I lived for four years in Taipei and especially when I lived the same amount of time in Taichung, these critters could be especially annoying when they'd start chirping in the middle of the night from some hidden location inside the apartment. A few times I got up to hunt them down. Strangely though, in the time since I've been in Yunlin, I've not heard a single gecko chirp in spite of the fact that there have been many more in my house here than ever before.
My teacher passed along to me an interesting tidbit of Taiwanese trivia. He said that north of the Zhuo-shui river ( 濁水溪) which passes through the towns of Xiluo and Mailiao in Yunlin County, the geckos chirp but south of the river they don't chirp. Anyone here in Taiwan have a conflicting experience?
Alas, the geckos here have seemingly removed themselves from view in recent weeks, so I can't test this theory until the spring perhaps.
