BoatBanter.com - Bugs and Geckos

Hi, Wayne, and group,

Posting this separately, as it's a different topic I'd not want to get
lost in the spider jokes...

Wayne.B wrote:
On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 22:08:17 -0500, "KLC Lewis"
wrote:

Bring your boat to Marinette Wisconsin, and I'll let my spiders duke it out
with yours. ;-)

Or bring it to Florida and let them duke it out with my geckos.

While we don't seem to have an infestation, we've noted the occasional
state bird aboard (most likely blown in, as one of them was struggling,
inverted, on the saloon sole before I did a Schwarzenegger on him),
and, lately, more occasional tiny cousins (way less than 1/4", but very
cockroach-y looking in shape) most likely brought aboard in beer case
bottoms my misguided contractor's wife uses to "clean up" (she cleans
off the surfaces I've been using to stage stuff by piling it into said
box bottoms, making it impossible to find anything when I return) in
the times when I was gone, before Lydia moved aboard.

I'm not the least bit squeamish, but I'd rather be bug free, just as
I'd rather have a dry bilge.

So, to the question: Do your geckos keep the boat bug-free? I've often
thought, once we splash and actually depart, that it would be a good
thing to have a couple of geckos aboard. Much less intrusive than
iguanas, and don't get so big as to be troublesome later. Once they
run out of bugs to eat, I expect they'd look peckish and we could put
out food and water for them.

In our boatyard, there are legions of small lizards from 2" to perhaps
6" head to tail, and Lydia observed one of the larger (none aboard,
sadly) stalk, catch, and eat a palmetto bug (cockroach from hell to
transplanted northeasterners, state bird to Floridians), so the concept
is sound.

I'm just wondering if any of you have successfully utilized geckos in
an environmentally friendly insect control program?

L8R

Skip and Lydia, sweltering without even Ernesto to cool us down in the
St. Pete Hete

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
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