Gekos: Pets or Pests?

Gordo the Geko: Baron of my Kitchen

When my wife and I moved into our apartment in Chennai no one ever said that we would be the only inhabitants. Besides the two of us there are an inordinate number of gekos who line the walls and keep us company. At first we were elated. The little green lizards are ferocious mosquito and ant predators and more or less leave us alone. We were happy to have a couple of them patrolling the apartments borders for pests. Sure they leave there little lizard dungs on the walls when nature calls, but shit happens it's part of the great cycle of life. We learned to live with it.

For almost a year we more or less peacefully co-existed. Sure there were a couple incidents where an over eager lizard tried to gobble up a giant cockroach and ended up choking on it and dying on our floor with bug half sticking out of its mouth. Or the time when a baby geko died mysteriously and a swarm of ants found it and bore it away up the wall like a hundred thousand pall bearers. But events like that were few and far between.

But things began to change in the spring when the gekos began to breed. I'm not sure where they keep their nests, or where they lay their eggs, but during season changes the apartment gets inundated with dozens of micro-lizards half the size of my pinky. They're much faster than the adult gekos and scatter like vermin when the lights go on. The baby lizards resemblance to insects make them much less lovable than their larger counterparts. I guess you could say that their children turned me against them.

However in time the geko kids get eaten by other lizards or grow up enough to take their place on the walls of my apartment. But as they breed more and more gekos have taken up residence in my house. There's Gordo, the extremely fat baron of my kitchen. Hank a lizard who freakishly has two tails, and a bevy of lesser known apartment denizens.

When we first moved in the lizards and I were on good standing, but their reputation is beginning to fall in my eyes. Some day soon I may have to evict them.