Burma is chiefly remarkable for a lizard that occasionally haunts the
trees and houses there. Span-long or more, it has a head big out of
all proportion compared with others of the lizard clans, and eyes that
sometimes seem to follow you like owl's eyes, and a loud voice.
"Tuck-too!" it cries, "Tuck-too! Tuck-too!" without any variation,
except an occasional repetition of the "oo-oo-oo" at the end, like a
musician tuning his pipes.
It is considered very lucky to have such a lizard in your house; and
as it is said to be fond of baby rats, and rats bring plague, the
prejudice may have some foundation in fact. Its principal food is
insects--a wholesome appetite too; but its great glory comes from the
similarity of its cry, weak in consonants and loud in vowels, to the
Burmese for _Quite so_. It is a great prophet. They say the rains can
be foretold by counting its _Quite sos_; and if you are about to wed
you should ask it, "Is she good? Is she bad?" "Quite so, quite so,"
says the prophet, impartial as Fate. But perverse, let it stop first;
and if your last question to get "Quite so" is the question,--"Is she
bad?" you should break off the marriage. They say that marriages have
been broken off on this account; and assuredly, in many a village, you
can see and hear the children with mock gravity keeping time to the
tucktoo and crying in chorus,--"Is she good? Is she bad?"
Sometimes, like other prophets, it comes to church to speak, never to
listen; and then it may be loudly heard, to the joy of the
congregations rather than of the clergy. The rest of its history has
been embalmed in a song by one of its friends:--
I
There's a goggle-eyed cherub, that's living with me;
'Tuck-too! Tuck-too!'
And, whatever I do, he is anxious to see.
'Tuck-too! Tuck-too!'