Once in a lifetime opportunity... hopefully

[Alusdra]

So for the past two days I had ten geckos at my house. Which a lot of you guys will probably think is a tiny number, but for me that's a lot! Hopefully it will be a high I'll never hit again. Some more of these guys are theoretically going to new homes at some point... It's so tempting to keep them all, damn gecko addiction.

The story is, a friend of mine had her gecko, Echo, but she basically kept telling me that if I didn't take him she would neglect him until he died (didn't feed him for weeks to months, kept him on sand with a heat rock! Argh! Refused to change a thing). The whole situation was pretty uncool, so to stay her friend I found Echo a new home. He was at my house for two days, and went today to a lovely couple who cooed over him and are going to spoil him rotten.

But I couldn't resist taking pics! Especially since everyone was done quarantine, so they could actually be together. I had to be quick though, with three males. (Papa won't start anything, but he will finish it, by gum! Path is like a Chihuahaua and doesn't know when to let things go, Echo's a pretty chill dude).

Anyway- here they all are! (click on it and I think you can see the larger version):
Going clockwise starting at the top left corner: Echo (6y, normal m), Jet (9mo, MS Bell Enigma f), Zatoichi (4y Bell f), Eclipse (9y, dark/aberrant normal), Path (9y, normal m), Papa Cin (16y, normal m), Big Mama (16y, normal f), Laurel (9 mo, Tremper Enigma f), Cricket (9 mo, Bell Enigma f), Button (9 mo, Bell Enigma f)


I had geckos all over my arms, pop under the cage top to gather, snap snap snap pictures and then grabbed them back up to go back to their respective cages. Path was eying Papa like he wanted to start something... I know it was a bit risky, but I couldn't resist. No breeding, no fights kiddos! They did great, more confused than anything I think.

 

[gage]

kool collection

 

[rawson5084]

Very nice leos and great picture!

 

[acpart]

I love those pile of gecko pictures.

Aliza

 

[Kristi23]

Very pretty geckos!

 

[Neill]

That is a great picture wasn't sure if you could do that with out males fighting. Now that i know you can do it quick like that, i need to do it.

 

[VampyricAngelX]

Wow, to me that is alot of geckos (I have two). I love this pic, but especially like the one looking up at the camera. Great shot

 

[Alusdra]

Yeah, I had to be super quick to make sure the males didn't try anything. Keep in mind though, that my males are 16, deformed from MBD and possibly the chillest male ever. So if you have breeding condition males I would be super cautious. I also made sure to put them as far away as possible right before taking the pic (all the females were already under the top) and then grabbed two of the three right after I took it. It's probably not actually a good idea... but I love pile o' gecko pics, too.

There's three sets of two siblings and you can tell from the markings, which is pretty cool, I think anyway.

The one looking up at the camera is the one that went to his new home today. I'm glad he did, one more day and I would have been totally (as opposed to almost fully) in love. I'm already sad he's gone and I only had him for what... 50 hours? Who can say no to that face though, right?

Damn gecko addictive cuteness.

 

[Bellalee]

Lots o geckos! May I ask what you do? Is it like adoption.

 

[VampyricAngelX]

The one looking up at the camera is the one that went to his new home today. I'm glad he did, one more day and I would have been totally (as opposed to almost fully) in love. I'm already sad he's gone and I only had him for what... 50 hours? Who can say no to that face though, right?

Damn gecko addictive cuteness.

lol that's definitely understandable, he is adorable. I had a hard time not falling in love with a tiny baby I saw at the store when I was getting gecko food, the little guy/girl came right up to the front when I peaked in and started climbing the glass. Was only there for five mins and I still felt a bit sad leaving him/her behind.

 

[Alusdra]

Echo is definitely a sweetie, but he went home with a great couple, so I'm pretty happy. Males especially are tough to have as pets once the numbers start to climb a bit- they need their own tank (none of my girls should be bred, a few would almost certainly get eggbound if they tried due to deformities).

I'm not a rescue... or at least I wasn't trying to be a rescue. I think that I've sort of gotten sucked into doing it, though. I took in four enigmas and they are severely affected. My thought was to only keep one or two and find more homes for the rest, but apparently taking on neurological exotics takes a "special kind of crazy" as my friends say. I thought it was a great idea: adorable gecko with interesting pathology? What's not to love, right? So I have to hand feed roaches and help them shed every week. No biggie. Except that for these "normal" people I hear about, they disagree.

So... what to do? I don't know. I'm thinking I might be finding new homes for some of my more normal geckos. Not that I have any that are really normal, unless you mean what morph they are. Did you mean normal geriatric with prolapsing hemipenes, or normal healed MBD?

I just get suckered into them... hit me with a sob story and I'm totally done. You should see the dogs and bird I've ended up with. Yowsers.

 

[Lovey]

That sure is a ton-o-geckos But so nice of you to take Echo and find him a home. I couldn't imagine someone owning him and saying they'd just let him die slowly like that...geesh So big ups to you for taking him and finding him a loving home!!

 

[Halley]

They look good!

 

[acpart]

There is something compelling about taking a creature with special needs and making them the best they can be. One thing that may let you have it both ways, is to see if there are other people who would like to adopt some of these special needs creatures, sort of to share the wealth. I was very impressed with the people who wanted to take some of my mild to moderate special needs hatchlings last season, who seemed to really want to take them and love them, not just to get a cheap/free gecko.

Aliza

 

[Alusdra]

It's actually not terribly uncommon for people I know to tell me that they are neglecting their animals in an effort to get me to take them. Usually they mean that it's in petstore standard care, which is almost always not good, but standard across the country so I ignore them except to try to wear them down with various arguments on why to upgrade. But this particular person was literally not feeding him and keeping him on the sand with a heat rock. Le sigh...

I have been trying to 'share the love' with the special needs guys, but no one is having any of it. They'll look at all the neurological and physical problems and ooh and aah, and then laugh when I suggest that they adopt them (literally! )

I came to a decision, though- I'm adopting out the two that are antisocial (dominant female= Zat and horny/dominant male = Path), excepting one male that has medical problems. So that will get me down to 7 geckos, but hopefully only 2-3 tanks. And incidentally, at the number my gecko sitter (aka Mom) said she would watch for me.