CLICK IMAGE for MY MEDITERRANEAN GECKO GALLERY

Rescued this Mediterranean house gecko in 2003 from the ‘curiosity of children’ at my sons’ elementary school.  The kids weren’t so much fascinated by the lizard itself … as by the tail the (scared) gecko dropped to distract them, which writhed about for twenty convincing minutes.

After some ‘mending time’ in the home aquarium, we released the lizard back into the wild. (Geckos store a great deal of energy in their tails; the loss of this crucial appendage can greatly impact their survivability.)

Mediterranean Geckos are a fairly benign invasive species in many parts of the world, but in Tucson they’ve displaced the (prettier) native Western Banded gecko in ‘peopled’ areas.

(NOTE: I took these photos with my first digital camera in 2003 — amazing how quickly this perfectionist converted from ponderous film SLRs to the svelte digital age…)