Sometimes change is not a pretty picture.

Take Bent Tail, for example. This is one of the handful of geckos that live in our tropical abode. He’s the only one we’ve named, as he’s distinguished by that bent tail. It’s got a story of its own, one we’ll never know.

Geckos can lose a tail and grow back another. Bent Tail seems to have damaged his, but never lost it, still holding his historic reminder.

On this day, he comes close to the kitchen sink. His little gecko toes vertically gripping our window frame. At this proximity, I see that Bent Tail seems to be letting go of something.

Shedding his skin, he looks a mess. Even a little thin and frail, if you ask me. I know little about geckos, but I do know that transformation can be just plain ugly sometimes.

This photo is nothing fetching, either. My hand was poised around drying dinner plates, trying to steady my wrist in a macro shot, close enough to capture, but not so zoomed that I scared him. He was a patient and generous subject in all of his awkward Shift.

We’ve been observing Bent Tail in the rafters for years. He is a strong survivor. Here’s to his Spring breakthrough. An outgrowing of the old.

To all things not so beautiful. The story of the butterfly, the swan.

And with that, Bent Tail and I offer up our submission to the Weekly Photo Challenge: Change.