Last night Norbert made his return in spectacular fashion. For those of you who might not remember or didn't read my email about the critters in my house, Norbert is the foot-long green gecko that lives in my fale.

So last night, while I was struggling to get to sleep in the middle of the night about 3am or so, I heard this huge crashing sound in the kitchen. I get up, walk over 10 feet to the kitchen and turn on the lights.

What do I see?

The first thing is the glass top of my stock pot, which is on the floor. Fortunately it's in one piece. Then I see my kittens. Mak is on the screen door and Filemu is on top of the fridge. They're looking up in the corner. Up in the corner is, of course, Norbert.

I want to end this so I need to get Norbert out of the house or the cats will keep me up all night knocking all the shit off my counters and stove to get to this lizard. But I can't just pick Norbert up because he's slippery quick. So I bust out my water gun and start squirting away.

I'm doing this for about ten minutes with Norbert slithering around the circumference of the kitchen when I realize that he has no place to go. So I open the screen door to give him an exit.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to keep the cats out of the kitchen with the squirt gun. It's effective until Norbert makes his move diagonally down the wall above the counter to get to the door.

Fil pounces but Norbert eludes her grasp and skitters outside.

Disaster averted.

Too bad I couldn't get back to sleep.