We have seen Mediterranean house geckos outside, but Mrs. Plant (v.3.0) found one living near the aquarium stand. We would like to capture him and take him outside before the cat gets him. Temps will remain warm in Arkansas for another month at most. She reports he already as a stumpy tail.
Any gecko trappers here?
Seems to me like the shoebox method might be the most useful, especially if you can maintain it so it is warmer and more humid than the room.
You could also tell it you want to buy insurance.
Thanks!
The insurance thing might work…
If Mrs. Plant didn’t say “Uh-oh, better get gecko”, you should conciser upgrading to v4.0…
Meanwhile, the idea of something called the “Mediterranean gecko” in Arkansas got me to googling. Introduced species. Apparently found here in South Carolina, too. (Along with several other speciesof lizard–now I"m wondering why I’ve never seen anything other than what I’ve always heard called a “streakfield.”)
Back to the gecko, apparently they bark. So maybe your cat will say “yeah, fuck this shit” and leave it alone.
She works nights, and when I see her off at 9:00 PM on warm nights she sometimes points out a gecko on the outside wall close to the mailbox. They are fast little suckers.
Perhaps I should use a wet mailbox as a trap. Hmmm…
My cats catch them all the time, usually they don’t kill and never do they eat them, guess they taste bad. I have never called them geckos, they are just lizards. Ignorance has been stomped on again.
I’ve got them in my apartment in Panama. They’re the closest thing I have to pets.
We get them here in Taiwan. Wife doesn’t like them, but the kids and I don’t mind. Catching them in the house is tricky because of all the places they can hide.
A meal worm in one hand and a fish scoop in the other (both available at a pet store).
It sounds more like a chirp than a bark to me; I approximate the sound by drawing in air between the teeth and cheek.
I’ve seen geckos inside my house here in Arizona. They usually cling high on the walls near the ceiling. I leave them alone as they’re beneficial and they’ll usually find their way back outside.
The place I used to stay at in Barbados had a gecko living behind a large photo on the wall. It would come out regularly. It didn’t bother us and we never bothered it. Why should we? Maybe it ate some bugs.
They’re in Hawaii of course, but while we’ve seen some in our condominium complex and even a couple inside our unit, not as much as we’d like. And we do like them.
They are rampant in Thailand. I remember finding the flattened remains of one inside the door jamb of my house in the North way back when. Poor fellow.
Something else to worry about in addition to cats.
Another one in Bangkok we found flattened inside the folds of this floor mat / pillow. That’s always the wife’s objection to them, that we could squash them. Otherwise, they’re actually beneficial, eating mosquitoes and other bugs.
Once I came home from work, turned on the ceiling fan, poured myself a beer, and sat down in my easy chair. After about a minute I heard loud SPLAT! I looked over and found a dead gecko at the base of the wall.
Apparently he had been resting on top of one of the fan blades. He was able to hang on for a while but once the fan got up to full speed he was flung against the wall.:eek:
A while ago when I had some untidy neighbors in the apartment below I had a roach infestation. Once or twice I reflexively swatted a roach to find it was a gecko, much to my chagrin.
Now that I don’t have roaches I can assume any little scurrying animal in the apartment is a gecko and leave it be.
Reminds me of a friend of a friend in Thailand. This was a lady from Texas, sent to Thailand by her church in some sort of missionary capacity. She was a real piece of work. Lived in the main northern city of Chiang Mai, a thoroughly modern city chock full of Western conveniences, restaurants etc. Lived in an ultra-modern condo with all the conveniences – air-conditioning, cable TV, washer/dryer, refrigerator etc. But she was supposed to write an account of her doings once a month for the church newsletter back home. This pampered and spoiled lady made it sound like she was on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. One of the many “hardships” she detailed was this gecko invasion and how she had to beat them mercilessly with a broom.
When I was a kid we lived in the Philippines for a few years. It was said that a house was not a home unless it had geckos living in it. You didn’t want to chase them away.
If the insurance fails, try Dana Gould
Lots here in Brisbane Australia, too. Plus is that they eat spiders. Minus is that they find their way into air conditioners where they die and clog up various important functions.
You people living in the southern climes amaze me. As a resident of the Great White North, where the largest and most terrifying of nature’s beasts usually found in urban houses is the common housefly, if I found a lizard in the house I’d consider it a Major Emergency. Like, the kind that 911 was invented for! 
Actually I’m going to give myself credit for commendable bravery in the face of danger on one rare occasion. I once heard loud noises in the living room late one night, things being knocked over, etc. I went out to investigate and found … a masked home invader! Yep, a raccoon had come down the chimney and was sitting on the fireplace mantle! It was looking at me like, yeah, I know, maybe not the smartest thing I ever did, but now I’m here, and what are ya gonna do about it?
I was half asleep and anxious to continue my slumbers, so I opened the front door, got a broom, and after a bit of sword-like manoevering the raccoon exited the front door and went off into the night, leaving a living-room full of sooty pawprints.
I had no dog at the time or the consequences could have been a good deal more lively!