I thought of calling this post “Tales of Two Tails” but came up with ‘Gecko Hallucinations’ first, so I thought I’d go with that. Just to clarify, I wasn’t on ANY kind of drug at the time, only about 900 mls of beer WITH food, so it wasn’t even like I was THAT drunk!
As I was sitting at my table enjoying some dinner the first night at the hostel, I noticed a gecko making his way across the table toward me. He was quite the brave little guy as he just kept coming closer and closer and closer, wiggling his little body back and forth with each cautious yet determined step.
Seeing how close he was getting, and not wanting to scare him away I stopped all my movements just to watch and see how close he’d actually come. A few minutes later he made his way to my beer bottle… Hmmm… Maybe he was after the water condensing off the bottle? At the beer bottle he lifted his head as if to look the entire length of the bottle up and down, trying to decide what his move would be. He then moved his head to the table where some water had pooled and, well didn’t really drink, but looked like he was sniffing it, lol!! I know this sounds nuts!! I was quite humored by this however!!
I made a movement with my hand to get an itch on my nose and he recoiled back about half way down the table. I know you should never feed wildlife, but I couldn’t help it! I threw over an itty bitty piece of egg from my plate and he immediately attacked it as if it were a bug that just landed. I ended up throwing a few more bits of egg his way when suddenly another gecko was on the table. This gecko only had half of his tail however, so needless to say they were named “short tail” and “long tail”, lol!!
Long tail noticed short tail’s arrival and immediately started twitching his tail back and forth all while giving off short little chirps. Everything seemed friendly enough but all of a sudden long tail scurried over and started biting (or something) short tail on his side! Short tail didn’t seem in any sort of pain however since he wasn’t going anywhere, but long tail kept on for about 20 seconds. Then he ran off as short tail remained.
The tables somehow seemed to have turned because though long tail seemed to be the dominant one (since he was the one attacking) it was him that was running off and short tail that remained.
Short tail started to come toward me this time so I threw him a few bits of egg. A few minutes later long tail came back on the table and started coming toward short tail again. At this point short tail started twitching HIS tail and chirping, but instead of another spat, long tail simply ran off again, lol!! And that was the last I saw of long tail that night…
Believe it or not the second night was the same! Long tail showed up first, then a little while later short tail came by. Long tail tried to show dominance by even raising up on the pads of his feet, arching his body in the air to make himself look bigger (or something!) but still it was always short tail who won out without any real effort being put forward by him, lol!!
The pictures taken are only of the short tailed gecko as on the third night I never did see long tail… Hmmm…
Ramblintraveler 