I Love Fresh Air

I have a rather annoying (to some) habit. It's a preference of mine and it's kind of a litmus test for my travel companions.

I am a window opener. It's the first thing I do when I arrive someplace on vacation. Whether it's Lake Las Vegas, Mexico, the Bahamas, or Key West, I'm on the terrace, enjoying the outdoors. I don't like to be cooped up and the trip over on the plane is almost more than I can bear.

I almost loathe A/C. In fact, I drive a convertible because I like outside air. I don't actually enjoy being tan all the time. I just can't help it. Got a lot of melanin.

So...as one would expect, upon arrival I threw open the sliding glass door. We started talking about sleeping with the door open all night, enjoying the island breezes, and listening to the ocean right outside. I was thrilled! Rapture, really.

As we prepared to leave for dinner, I decided to lock up because it would be so easy to climb over the wall to our patio and stroll into our room and steal our welcome chocolates - or our gin.
So, I was closing the door and some weird leaf fell down and hit me in the face and landed in between my tank top and my lei. I stopped and looked down to remove it and the leaf jumped up off my chest and hit me in the eye. I screamed so loud (like a girl, even!) that Nana came running out of the bathroom to see what seaweed monster was dragging me off.

By that time, I had grabbed the gecko off my chest and tried to fling it out into the grass. It had other ideas and had run up my arm and jumped back into the drapes.

You might think it was a gecko like this (because there are tons of them around the property):

But it was a gecko more like THIS!

I have to assume that it ran outside...startled by my high-pitched shriek and frenzied, mindless efforts to kill it. (I wouldn't normally do that, but fight or flight was kicking in.)

We ended up keeping the door closed while we were sleeping, much to my disappointment. I just couldn't in good conscience leave it open and risk Nana being carted away by giant, muscle-bound, ill-tempered, mutant geckos.

Each morning, we greeted the day by opening the room up and each evening, before bed, we solemnly closed - and locked (did I mention the opposable thumbs on that green monster?) - the door.

Later we ran across this sign.

Now they tell us.