Our Friend Stubby

If you know me, you know I love animals with the zest of a five year old.  Anything, unless it is creepy crawly like snakes.  Caterpillars are fine with me, though I suppose they could be characterized as "crawly".  Animals with fur, even cuter!  I get giddy and ridiculous.  I just love animals.

One day, I was near our back door (inside the house) and spotted a tiny black and grey gecko under our little spring door stopper.  I freaked a bit, called Mike over, and then awwww'ed at how cute he was.  We contemplated trying to catch him, fetched some cups, and then after a bit of research and generally knowing they're harmless and eat bugs, we decided to keep him.  And by "keep him", I mean, let him be and roam at will.  We haven't seen him since then, so either he returned outside or is our nighttime watchman gobbling up spiders at our house! 

Soon after that, we stepped on to our front patio one evening and saw fun little geckos on the ceiling, I was ecstatic!  These ones are a lighter orange-y color and hang out on our siding.  When they're scared, they sneak in to the cracks for protection.  It became a little ritual to go out front when it gets dark and look for our gecko friends. 

We then found out they like our back patio as well.  This is fun because our back door is all glass, so we can flip on the light and admire them from inside the house.  We call this our "Gecko Check"! 

One night, I saw this poor little guy who had lost his tail.  I told Mike, all sad-like, and the guiltiest look flew across Mike's face.  He confessed that when he was mowing, he saw a little gecko run from the mower, and that he might have caught his tail.  I did a little sad freak-out session, apologized to the little guy, and jokingly made Mike feel guilty the rest of the night.  We did read though, that they can "throw their tail" in moments of extreme fear or danger.  Pretttty sure a lawn mower fits in that category, so I'm going with that situation :)

Meet Stubby

Since then, we've been seeing the same gecko on our porch many nights.  We decided to name him Stubby.  There are still some others out there that we say hi to, but our little friend is Stubby.  He likes to hang out right by the door.  Apparently he holds no resentment...or he's planning an evil attack.  For now, I'll consider him my friend!

Adventures in Austin, AKA Geckoland.