If you live in Malaysia, you get house lizards for free. Not one or two, but a whole family of them, I promise, you will.

The number of lizards per house may vary but the more rural or countryside your home happens to be located at, there will be no shortage of the rubbery ceiling-scaling creature to meet you before you even set foot in your house.

I honestly don't know how I feel about them though I do know that some people justify their act of lizard violence with nudges from ancient holy lines. I am no saint and some days, I wish they'd just stop the habit of leaving traces of mostly black with a tiny white topping poopery at weird places.

I think they get too comfortable with human presence they just decide to shit whenever and wherever they please, sometimes. And especially soon after you've just cleaned up. This happens quite a lot, I assure you. With lizards both outside and inside the home, naturally I get to sit down and observe their personalities.

Yes, different lizards have different ones, just like us humans and cats. Some are more outgoing, chit-chatting away the odd hours to my utter annoyance and some are so quiet, I feel they're so relatable, I forget they're lizards that poop everywhere, for a while. Just a little while.

While I intensely dislike them for their rude pooping behavior, I do appreciate that they keep the insect population at bay. I will be more appreciative if they are responsive to my urgent distress calls (or rather, screams) whenever a creepy-crawlie is spotted but alas, I don't talk lizard and they usually are afraid of me directly eyeballing them.

In a way, I do understand their apprehensiveness as random eye contact from strangers especially those of a different species and much larger in size must really be terrifying. Sometimes, I find people of the same species pretty disturbing, so, I do kind of get that.

What I cannot ever get used to is having a lizard pop up so suddenly from whatever it is doing when I least expect it. I promise the house isn't a secret lizard zoo. It's just that they won't leave, ever, and have decided to cohabitate with us.

One of the Asian house lizards decided to chill at a side of an empty rice-cooking pot left for washing in the kitchen sink one time. I, of course, did not know this then for lizards are notorious for their sneakiness. So, when I saw it slithered away from the corner of my eye, I unleashed a scream so loud and startled my poor mom who then screamed back at me.

Lizards trigger unintentional human fighting that may escalate to an instantly deep, silent war. The lizard that slithered away, escaped unharmed. I bet it just went and left another poo as a gift somewhere. It is that rude.

I'm certain the countryside lizards are ruder than the city ones because I've lived to observe their behavior in both places. The rural lizards are wilder and will not hesitate to defecate anywhere. The city ones though are not as many in the house and are always out partying near giant light fixtures.

My grandma likes to say that anytime a lizard is heard chit-chatting away, it's a bad sign. I'm not sure a bad sign of what but the superstition has a root in a religious context. As much as I want to banish them from the house; lizards, like cats, pigs, dogs, goats and sloths don't decide their entrance into the great big, judgmental world.

I'd hate to be born as a lizard knowing that I have to fake my own death by distracting a fat cat with my detached yet still wriggling tail. They say, it's painful for a lizard to have its tail grow back.

They also say, life goes on. Even for lizards.