Month: September 2023

Look up!

I had my eyes on the sky. The rim of the blue bowl was pink in the east and gold in the west, a cloudless pastel sunset. After a spell of September monsoons, the evenings are cooler, and the Truth or Consequences bats have been keeping normal bat hours again rather than sleeping in until long after sunset like they did in July or trickling out a few at time like they did in August. I walked to the bats’ home, an empty building with a mural on the back next to one of the art galleries. Right on the cusp of sunset, they poured out, the entire corps de ballet taking the stage at once, flowing from the open roof of the old building, dancing toward the Rio Grande.

Two women sitting at an outdoor table at Riverbend Hot Springs across the street kept talking, not looking up. Two men walking a dog remained deep in conversation as they passed the mural, not looking up.

While hundreds of tiny bats passed over their heads. The show was over in less than five minutes.

How to Rescue a Gecko Stuck in a Roach Trap

I’m posting this as a public service to anyone who may in the future find a gecko stuck in a roach motel. You may think you don’t need this information, but next year or five years from now, you might. And you’ll remember. And a gecko may live to hunt bugs for another day.

If you live in a warm climate, especially in a city with aging infrastructure like Truth or Consequences, no matter how clean your home is or how diligent your exterminators, roaches sometimes sneak in under door. Hot places also have lizards, including cute little Mediterranean house geckos that eat roaches. Technically, they’re an invasive species in New Mexico, but the bugs seem more like invaders. A tiny nocturnal lizard that dines on the enemy is a good neighbor. I like house geckos. They have important cameos in several of my books, especially the geckos on the window screen at the end of Soul Loss.

The other day, I opened the door to my apartment, and a gecko dashed inside. It was pink with red spots, enormous eyes, and a long slender black-and-white striped tail. A perfect tail. The sign of a sheltered life. No close encounters with predators had snapped off a single stripe. My first thought was, “No, no, don’t go in the roach motel!” I caught the gecko in my hands, but it escaped and took same path a roach would take. Straight behind the refrigerator and into the trap.

My attempts to free it failed. A neighbor suggested water might soften the glue. I drizzled a little warm water onto the trap, but the glue held firm. The poor gecko died—of exhaustion and stress from struggling against the glue, I could say, or perhaps it died from terror of the humans hovering over it. But the sad truth is, the gecko died from our failure to think of looking up how to save it.

Late at night after this distressing event, when I should have been working on a book, I wondered if I could have saved it. To my amazement, my search immediately turned up an article on saving a lizard stuck in a roach motel.

I was as surprised as the author of the article was when she’d searched for the answer to the same question and found numerous results. She, fortunately, had the presence of mind to do research while her gecko, a volunteer housemate-not-quite-pet, was still alive. She saved him.

Using information from her article, several others, and some videos, I’ve compiled the steps in rescuing a stuck lizard, in case any of these older resources become unavailable.

  1. Stay calm, and maybe your gecko will, too. Geckos can live a long time without food or water. As long they and their rescuers don’t panic, the situation is manageable.
  2. Cut away the trap around the lizard to make it easier to free him, but not so close that you risk cutting him.
  3. Assemble the rescue kit: Q-Tips and vegetable oil and a damp paper towel. Put some oil in a small dish and dip a Q-tip in it, then slowly rub around lizard, so the oil works its way under him. Be careful not to use much pressure. Don’t pour the oil. It’s not good for lizard skin. Use only the Q-tip.
  4. Very gently, move him around, like a subtle wiggle. This unsticking process can take up to an hour. As you free one part, cut the trap out from under that part so he doesn’t get re-stuck. I think you possibly could, as an alternative, stick a piece of paper firmly over the glue once a tail or limb is free, so you don’t have to use scissors or a knife again near the gecko. I found videos in which people used lightly oiled latex gloves to ease their fingers under the lizard once the oil around its perimeter had a chance to work, and then they ended up with the whole lizard on their hand.
  5. Place your liberated lizard on a damp paper towel to rest and get the oil off. Geckos can “drink” by absorbing moisture through their skin, so they should not remain oily. A man in one gecko rescue video actually wiped his lizard down with wet paper and then let the lizard rest and chew on the paper for moisture. (This was a gecko who lived in his home and knew him.)
  6. Either get rid of your roach traps and welcome your new bug-eating roommate, or put the lizard outside.

My neighbor told me the next day that he’d mentioned our gecko tragedy to a friend who immediately told him about the vegetable oil method. Gosh. This apparently happens so often there’s an established rescue technique. I hope I never have to use it, but at least I’ll be ready. And you will be, too. Share this widely with others, even if they think they’ll never need it. You never know.

On behalf of house geckos, thank you.