Gecko & Ant Invasion

After we initially moved into our house, we had to evict a lot of geckos out of the house. Since those first few weeks though, we hadn't seen any geckos in the house for quite a long time. A few weeks ago we did see one living in our family room. However, the little sucker was too quick for us and would scurry behind the air conditioner before we could get it out. Oh well, not a lot we could do about it...so we just sort of let it be...after all, one little gecko in the family room (which is a long way from the bedroom where we mainly don't want them to be) couldn't really hurt anything, could it?

Well, since we have returned from Dubai, we have seen more and more geckos in the house. I swear our family room gecko had a party and invited all his gecko buddies over while we were gone. We saw him...(or maybe its a her...but we tend to like to think as the geckos in and around our house as all being males...if we have both females and males...yikes that could mean that they are reproducing and the females could be laying their eggs in our house)...in the family room one night. Too quick again for us to get. The next night, S was walking up the stairs when he yelled for me to get the broom...in our house this doesn't mean he's had a sudden urge to do some cleaning...nope, it means there's been a gecko sighting. Well, I get the broom, but the gecko scurries up the wall to the rafters...and let's just say it's the biggest gecko to date that we've had in our house. If I were telling a gecko tale, I would say it was like 2 feet long...in reality though, it probably was around 7 inches long. Anyway, we haven't seen it since that night, so maybe it died in our rafters of old age (I'd hate to think that it's still alive somewhere in our house, so it's just easier to think that it went back out the same way it got in or that it just up and died).

The next afternoon, S got home from work really early at 4:57pm. He's normally not home until between 6:45pm and 8pm. Anyway, he hadn't been home for ten minutes when he yells for me to get the broom. Sure enough there was a gecko on the door to our puja room (prayer room that we use instead for storage).

Anyway, I was able to snap this photo before we got it out of the house (don't worry you gecko lovers...no geckos were injured in the taking of this photo). Now our puja room is right next to the front door, so we didn't have far to go with this guy...however, he wasn't going to go out without a battle. We had him basically out the front door when he did a back flip off of the door at me and landed on the floor. Well, of course, I shrieked, but since S had the broom, he was able to get it out the door. After we had the door securely shut, I noticed that when the guy did his kung fu move at me that he also pooped...so, now I can put that I have had gecko poo flung at me.

Anyway, it's sort of hard to tell in the above photo, but this guy at some point in his life has dropped his tail. To prove my point, I have cropped and enlarged the gecko portion of the photo.

If you look closely, you can see that his tail is two different colors. From what little I know about geckos (I never have claimed to be an expert, so correct me if I'm wrong with this info), their tails will break off if grabbed by a predator. Then they will regrow their tail. I'm pretty sure this is what has happened with this guy.

Then yesterday morning, S saw another gecko while I was still asleep. He went to get the broom, but it was gone by the time he got back. He thinks maybe it was the one from the family room. Anyway, I probably shouldn't say this, because as soon as I do it will happen, but I have never seen a gecko in the house when I have been by myself. I keep trying to tell S that they are just attracted to him. More than likely though, he's home at night when geckos are active.

Anyway, just when we were starting to relax about the gecko situation (after all, S was beginning to not immediately put his shoes into the rubbermaid container...even a few nights the shoes sat out in the open all night long), now we have gecko fear again (and after the puja gecko, S has went to putting his shoes back in the rubbermaid container). Well, maybe it's not fear exactly...let's just say, I really don't mind them and I'm definitely not scared of them (I'm not the type who shrieks at the sight of a mouse and jumps on the nearest chair...I only shriek when the geckos flip off the walls and fling poo at me)...I just don't like to be surprised by them. Being that geckos can crawl anywhere (I haven't seen too many mice crawling on ceilings), the thought of them running loose in my house just freaks me out a little bit. If only I could train them to stay outside...if only, if only, if only.......

The biggest thing that is driving me nuts right now are ants. This story all starts about a month ago when the couple was here from the U.S. looking for housing (same couple I'm storing their food). The wife was kind enough to bring bags of brown sugar for everyone (thanks again J, it's greatly appreciated) as this is one of the items we can't have in our food shipment because India customs for some reason won't allow it. Well, I ended up with all of the brown sugar. Being the idiot that I am at times (hey, I'm not too proud to admit that I have my stupid moments), I left all of the brown sugar sitting on the kitchen counter. Sure enough, ants!

Now, the one good thing about ants are that they don't like household cleaners...especially kitchen ones that contain bleach. So after sacrificing two of the bags of brown sugar (the rest were ant free and went into the freezer) that were filled with ants, I bleached my entire kitchen. The ants were marching across the counters in a single file row...it was almost sort of cute for a moment...looked like something you see in a cartoon. That only lasted for a moment before my bleach attack.

Well no ants for a few days. Then I bought a couple of bagels that were individually wrapped in their own bags. Well, one of the bags had an itty bitty hole in it...the ants were back! Out comes the bleach cleaner again!

I think it was during the bagel occurrence that the ants also found some wrapped candy I had in a bowl on the counter. Now the candy had been there for a week or so...and had been ant free...but I guess the ants needed dessert after the bagel lunch. So out went a whole bunch of candy.

Well, I've already told the chocolate covered ants story from our food shipment. Of course, those were a different type of ant...still ants though.

After we got back from Dubai, I was finishing putting away all of our groceries. Well I had left on our counter a few boxes of those popular 100 calorie snacks. I figured they would be safe from ants as they are pretty well sealed up...nope I was wrong.

ants. I went to move a box of 100 calorie pack of Cheetos, and there were ants all over the outside of the box. Well I open the box, and sure enough, one of the packs had a minute little whole in it...just big enough for ants to get in. I open the pack, and out comes crawling about a gazillion ants. Hmmm...maybe I need to have a talk with the Walmart Frito Lay delivery person about this. Maybe I could get free bags of Cheetos for life due to my pain, suffering, and mental anguish of now having a fear of opening a bag of Cheetos full of ants. (OK, for the rest of you, I guess I should tell you this is a joke...I'm good friends with the guy who delivers Frito Lay to the Walmarts in B/N, and I know his wife reads my blog...so T, tell M about my potential lawsuit and see if he would be willing to settle out of court...instead of free chips for life, maybe free chips for a year???)

Anyway, after I got rid of the chip ants, we haven't had any ants for a few days. Of course, everything is now either in the fridge, in the freezer, in a ziploc bag, or in a tupperware container.

Tonight though, I go in the kitchen, and this is what I see.

This is my window ledge, and yep, those are ants. Now, only an hour earlier, I had been in the kitchen making supper, and I think I would have noticed these fellows. So where they came from, and what they are doing, I have no clue. There's nothing out for them to get to. Anyway, out comes the bug spray (figured a few too many for the bleach cleaner)...and so my battle with the ants continues.

Do geckos eat ants? Or should I be looking into getting a pet anteater? The thing is...I have yet to see a gecko in our kitchen where we have the ant problem...you would at least think that if I had to live with the geckos that they would at least be useful and keep the ant population to a minimum. Is this really too much to ask of the geckos?