Geckos
Written on May 12, 2026
Geckos live in and around my house in the Philippines, and they're welcome to stay for as long as they want. They eat small roaches, moths, and other insects, but I've only seen them munching on moths.
The only time they annoy me is when I accidentally step on one as it's scurrying across the floor, or when one or more of them decides it's time to chirp when I'm trying to sleep.
I find dead geckos all over the place, but I have to assume accidental deaths. I once found one in the door jamb of the refrigerator freezer, squished and frozen. How it got there I'll never know.
My Experiences Before I Moved to the Philippines
For those of you who've never been around any geckos, they're just small lizards. They're harmless. I saw my first group of them when my family moved to Hawaii in 1974. I had never seen even one before that.
They would hang around in the same areas as the small insects, usually on the window screens or light bulbs left on at night. Close to their primary food sources, I'm sure.
The next time was when I was in the military and stationed in Hawaii and then on the island of Okinawa in Japan. I didn't see them again until I was in Phoenix, Arizona, and only in one specific place.
That's when I learned geckos do push-ups to stay cool. Not really push-ups, but that's what it looks like. I moved from Phoenix to the Philippines, and they're all over the place in the Philippines.
Geckos in the Philippines
If I go downstairs at night and flip on the light switch, I'll always spot at least one of them scurrying to hide. I don't know why they do it. I expect that behavior from cockroaches, but not from geckos. Perhaps it's the sudden light because they're nocturnal.
They defecate all over the place, but it just looks like dirt on the floor to me. Since I have someone sweeping the floors of my house every day, I never see enough of it to bother me. I don't know where they hide during the day.
Please don't ask me the differences in geckos. We obviously have house geckos, but the ones that hang out near the lights outside look the same, small and gray. Some people hate geckos and consider them pests. Some people fear them.
Other people eat them. Yes, eat them. I've even seen the stray cats eating them when they can't seem to find anything else to eat. Of course, the stray cats will eat most insects they can catch as well.
There are some creatures that bother me. Most of them are insects, spiders, and other small nuisances. Lizards don't unless they're gigantic, and when I say gigantic, I mean Gila Monster and Komodo Dragon gigantic. They're big enough to eat me.
I Like Geckos
My house was invaded several times by moths that swarmed the lights outside the house after a heavy rain. It was so bad, I had to kill the lights inside the house. Somehow, they managed to squeeze in through window gaps.
The geckos would eventually ascertain where the best place of attack would be. Each moth invasion would last around two hours. That's about how long it took for the gecko army to eat all the moths they could get to. So yeah, I like geckos.
Image by Marc Pascual from Pixabay