Apparently I’m a ‘provider’ of food for a family of Geckos…
When I turn on my bathroom light at night, I would occasionally hear a ‘scurrying’ sound, like something was scratching on the screen. Turns out I’ve been feeding a mated pair of Geckos.
Dunno if this is mom or pop, but the ‘parents’ are about 6 inches long now. With tail, approaching a foot long.
And the other night I got my first picture of ‘Little Bit’. S/he is about 2 1/2 inches long with a tail about the same length. 
And now I know what the ‘scurrying’ sound is, note the way they’ve hooked into the screen with their claws. Don’t know what is going to happen when it gets cold out… sigh
At least you can rest easy knowing your insurance coverage is in place. ?
I will trade you a large vegetation destroying deer herd for your Geckos.
They look pretty cool.
Lawdog had some interesting commentary on African geckos, a while back 🙂 On the upshot, I bet your scaly friends there are doing their best to reduce the local bug population.
I counted ten geckos one evening on my mother’s porch. They’d feast on the bugs attracted to the kitchen light. Where they went in the winter is beyond me, but they would always reappear when the weather became warmer.
At least they aren’t tokay geckos, what we used to call f-you lizards back in the day.
While the sentiment would fit in around Chez OldNFO, thankfully these geckos are much, much quieter!
We had a tiny green frog move into our window air conditioner once. It took a LONG time to figure out where those ‘cheep’ noises were coming from.
Are they selling insurance?
They aren’t proper geckos unless they sell you insurance, Old NFO. Maybe they’re just biding their time.
Hey Old NFO;
Perhaps you can claim them as “dependents?”…Just a thought?…I know, I know…I will let my self out….
Nice that they let you share their home.
They’ll go into cracks or underground and go dormant during the cold, coming out when it gets warm again. Sometimes going dormant at night when it’s cold and moving again during the day.
I’ve got anoles that do the same thing. There was a recent bloom of the little darlings so we have these tiny lizards with huge heads and scrawny bodies running around everywhere. Good. Too many ants around.
Yep, bug hunting on the screen during the night. When I was a kid, I’d pump up my Daisy 880 (BB/pellet rifle) and use the air to launch them from the screen to the darkness beyond.
Like Beans, we have a few Anoles around too. I wish we had as many Texas Horned Lizards (i.e. horny toads) as we did when we were young. Indescriminate poisons kill the ants which are a major food source of them.
The two times we deployed to the Philippines, we had problems with roaches in the enlisted barracks. Both times, on the day of arrival I went and caught a couple of small geckos and released them in my room. They had free reign of the place and we never had any bug problems. You could occasionally hear them moving around, but it beat the hell out of having to shake roaches out of your uniform every morning. (Yes they could be that bad.)
I had gotten transferred to Pearl Harbor HI from the East coast and was assigned a room in one of the barracks on Ford Island. That first night, I was awakened out of a sound sleep by a loud “barking” noise coming from somewhere inside my room! I looked everywhere for whatever man-eating creature was stalking me. Finally, I figured it out. There was a mating pair of geckos on the inside of my window screen. At the time, I had no idea what they were. The next morning, everyone laughed at me when I described the encounter, but after I found out they were benign, non-poisonous critters that would keep the bug population down, them and me got along fine. Indeed, after all these years, I kind of miss them.
Mrs. Drang tells me she had a gecko in the house when she was on Oahu. When it got cold (for Hawaii values of “cold”) it wouls live behind the TV. Back when TVs got hot, of course…
All- Thanks for the comments! And no, these don’t sell insurance… LOL
Posted from my iPhone.
I love the gecko family that sets up in the Compound and its sacristy!
LSP- LOL… Good for them!
Had a gecko roommate when I was stationed on Okinawa, Japan a couple decades ago. Once I found out what the chirping noise was, I gave him free reign on the place, and he kept the bugs away. It was a very pleasant partnership.
My house has a large brick exterior facing west;it absorbs the afternoon heat and stays warm hours after sunset. Naturally, the geckos love it. I’ve counted as many as 30 of the wiggly critters on the brick wall and patio. They don’t bother me much, but my wife hates them. You see, we don’t have ordinary scurry-away geckos. We have drop geckos. Drop geckos hang out 8-10 feet up the wall or on the patio ceiling. When startled, when, say, a human walks underneath them, they don’t scurry away like most lizards. Nope. They fling themselves off whatever they’re clinging to and trust in gravity to make their escape. It’s a pretty effective strategy until they get tangled in someone’s hair or go down a shirt. They don’t bother me much. They’re harmless, and now I know to expect them they don’t stake me as much. My wife hates them with a grand passion, though. She’s taught the dogs to hunt them — to be fair, she’s taught the dogs to chase anything moving when she screams, so it didn’t take long for the dogs to add the drop geckos to the list of things they’re allowed to chase.