AqualogNEWS100
28
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G
Eve so, in the course of decades of
keeping such animals, you inevitably
encounter exceptions from time to time,
creatures whose individual personality is
so pronounced that all your good
intentions, and your resolve to avoid
anthropomorphizing your pets, go out
thedoor.
One such personality was a Tokeh, who
moved house with me four times and
never spentmore thanatmost a fewdays
ina terrarium. It all startedwithapieceof
cork back to which a Tokeh female had
attached her eggs. These large geckos
(scientific nameGekko gecko) usually lay
two eggs. A special adhesive sticks the
lime-rich and hence very fragile reptilian
eggs securely to the substrate such that
they cannot be removed without
damaging them. The bark was too large
for the available breeding equipment,
and so my friend Thomas Petsch of the
company City-Zoo (at that time still in
Darmstadt) askedmewhether I could try
and incubate theeggs at home.
Iwas keen to try.Thus I filledanaquarium
withwater toadepthof 10cm, installeda
heater-stat, positioned three bricks such
that their upper edges protruded above
the water’s surface, and placed the bark,
witheggs,on top.
Two months later I moved out of my
parents’ home.The bark found itself on a
pile of bogwood which I was to collect
later.“Later”became“much later”,and four
weeks after my departure my mother
phonedme to tell me there was a lizard
running around my former room. I
immediately checkedmy terraria, but no
specimenwasmissing. It turnedout tobe
a delightful little Tokeh, banded as is
typical in juveniles of this species.
Despite the rather less than favorable
conditions, it had hatched from the
forgotteneggs!
I packed my little “wild-caught” in a
transportation container and,backhome,
put it in a terrarium with a number of
Turkish lizards.However, theTokehdidn’t
think toomuchof that idea,as a fewdays
later it made good its escape at feeding
time.Right from the start its favorite spot
was thegapbetween two terrariastacked
one above the other.There itwould sit in
agap thatwasnot quitewideenough for
me to get my hand in, and look at me
contemptuously with its slit-eyes. My
terrarium room, like every other such on
the planet, is home to large numbers of
free-range crickets, so there were no
problems as regards feeding, and the
Tokehgrewon apace.
About a year later I moved again. This
time, however, it was my intention that
the Tokeh should mutate into a normal
terrarium occupant and spend its days
behind glass. I didn’t even get as far as
trying it! I had just started unpackingmy
snakes in thenew room (before theyhad
BabyTokehs (
Gekkogecko
) haveanattractively ringed tail.
