N 30° 2’38.48″ W 95°22’57.28″ Google Earth Location
For a couple of months in 2001 I lived in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston, though while there, I did almost no photography. This is one of the few exceptions, the first wild gecko I’d seen, much less photographed, but I was cheating: I’d captured it almost as soon as I spotted it, knowing that attempting to photograph it in situ would likely result in it vanishing before I could even focus. So this is indoors in a simulated setting on a sprig of cypress (I think) with a houseplant in the background – credit to the gecko for not leaping off and secreting itself someplace in the apartment. It’s a Mediterranean house gecko (Hemidactylus turcicus,) which as the name clearly indicates, is not native to the US, though they’ve spread enormously since their introduction; I was later to find the same species (but probably not the same specimen) in Florida and do a few more detailed shots there, including close-ups of their feet on a glass pane. The overall length of this specimen was comparable to my finger, making that head only the size of my fingernail. They are, of course, excellent climbers and can easily scamper upside-down across a ceiling, primarily nocturnal, which makes my finding this one somewhere around midday fairly lucky. I now regret not hanging onto it until after nightfall to capture those pupils more dilated; geckos have the best pupils, vertically slitted but with four ‘beads’ of greater openings, not really visible here, whose purpose escapes me. I’ll look it up if I’m asked nicely, “nicely,” meaning, “with money.”
There’s absolutely nothing that I miss about Texas, but this little guy at least gave me one pleasant memory of my brief time there, though I’ll hazard that this was probably not reciprocated despite being released soon after this frame was taken.