Log #42, House Critters
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Updated December 11th
Original Resident at #122
Our little gecko is a silent one, no clicks or chattering, but somehow Gale has been able to locate him (her?), as well as a few other critters.
House Gecko (Hemidactylus) like ours (thnx to Kodak Gallery).
Our little cricket eater lives behind the fidge
where it's warm, and also protected from feline predators. He's nocturnal, so there's no telling
where he roams when the rest of us are asleep. We sighted him, once, upstairs on the bedroom
ceiling.
Gale caught sight of him, twice. Both times the gecko was stuck to the wall in the vertical,
close to home. Gale shot
to the top of the fridge, but he was no match for the speedy lizard, who whipped down the wall to
safety while Gale was still mid-air.
We're hoping that the fridge motor provides the required warmth for the gecko (the house temp
hovers at a constant 68 degrees) because we'd like
him to stick around and eat as many bugs as he can find. Crickets seem to be a favorite, and
where there are crickets, there are scorpions. We'd just as soon have neither, and as a bonus, gecko
sightings are fun for all!
And speaking of critters, Stan found the petrified body of a huge, 3.5-inch centipede in the
laundry room. Sure hope his living relatives don't come looking for him.
Our corpse looked like this Tropical Centipede
in the Order Scolopendromorpha (thnx to
whatsthatbug.)
My friend, Gwen, of cat sanctuary fame, says not to worry about scorpions or centipedes
because the cats will take care of them. That must be true, because we found another scorpion
one morning, but someone had already dispatched him.
Too bad the felines aren't such a threat to the roaches.
Both kitties treat cucarachas like
wind-up toys, something to play with but not to kill. Stan performs the killing, on all fours,
wielding a fly swatter, screaming, "Death to the infidel." It usually takes a few false starts
to wrest the
beast from the kitties and then to chase the slinky thing down. Ugh.
