Murder

Here in Florida we live in a garden setting where the sidewalks show the furious activity of tiny lizards who are constantly presenting themselves on the pavement, lifting their heads, staring about, then darting on.  I suppose they live in the great outdoors somewhere, near water I would imagine, although I only see them as they stand on their four legs, look about, and dart away off the sidewalk into oblivion.  One time I was sitting on my lanai (Floridian for screened in porch) reading and noted that one of these tiny creatures had made it up to the third floor, how I cannot imagine, and as I stared at it idly, wishing it would disappear it obliged me by doing so.  Where did it go? I never saw it on my lanai again.  There was something creepy about the lizard, remnant of a dinosaur, I thought, tiny, and baby like in its flesh tones and tiny feet.  I hoped it went down the way it came up.  People kept telling me the lizards come up the sewer system, I can't quite imagine it, so I don't think about it.  No budding research scientist was I in my youth.  The other night, a year or so later, another tiny lizard crossed my view, this time in the kitchen, stood in that characteristic way looking about then scurried off, a week later the lizard or his brother scurried to my attention across the floor of my bathroom when I turned the light on, then darted into the shadows.  I wished the lizard to be gone, but was not about to pursue it.  Yesterday I boiled myself an egg for breakfast and when I determined it had reached the proper temperature in the correct length of time, I lifted the small cast iron sauce pan with the egg boiling in it and brought it to the sink in order to tip the boiling water out.  As I refocused my tired old eyes for this maneuver and lifted the pan and started to pour I noted the little lizard standing on his forelegs near the edge of the sink looking up at me, and saying, as my imagination played it, "I want out of here."  The scalding water had already set its course into the sink and onto the body of the lizard, and as I saw this, I deliberately vigorously poured the steaming deluge down on the little naked white vulnerable childlike body, so innocent, lying now silent in instant death.  What had I done?  Devastated, I tore off a paper towel, retrieved the lifeless creature, laid him out on this burying clothe, carefully folded it symmetrically, and placed it in the kitchen trash barrel. I will never forget my hesitation when first I saw him in the sink, me with the pan of boiling water in my right hand, the murder weapon to be deployed or no, as the human consciousness debated.  "Die," the voice within me seemed to say, and the pan tipped into the sink.  I can still recall every moment.