The scales in our eyes

Learning to see the geckos of Tulsa

I spent the summer learning to see them. The first one I saw was relatively large—big enough that his own shadow called attention to him as he hung out in the middle of a wall under a bright orange light. A few weeks later, taking the dog for our evening walk, I saw another. Pretty soon, I was looking for them every night. I live downtown, and though there are geckos all over Tulsa—a friend recently found one in his kitchen—the ones in question, my neighborhood geckos, live on a building around the corner from me. Looking for them has become a nightly ritual. 

The geckos of Tulsa are Mediterranean house geckos (Hemidactylus turcicus), and as their name suggests, they are not originally from Oklahoma. No one seems to be sure exactly how long they’ve been here or how they got here in the first place, but anecdotal evidence suggests they were living in Norman as early as the 1960s or ‘70s. People theorize they escaped from a lab, were pets that got loose, or rode in on oil tankers or with exotic produce, but the likeliest scenario is they were accidental hitchhikers in boxes or shipping containers. 

As a species, they are incredibly widespread and can be found all over the world, from the Middle East to the Caribbean islands to the southern United States, but the individual animals are actually homebodies and will often spend their entire lives in or around a single building. In fact, scientists have suggested most gecko dispersal happens before the animals are even hatched. 

Mediterranean geckos have communal nests with up to 20 eggs, according to Dr. Kyle W. Selcer, who spent nearly two years studying a population of them in South Texas. “The eggs are often located in boxes, which could be transported when people move,” he said. “A box containing a communal nest could carry a mini-colony.”

It’s not quite accurate to call our geckos an invasive species, because they occupy an ecological niche that was previously unoccupied—which is to say that before they arrived in Tulsa, no one else was sticking to walls and eating moths. In order to qualify as an “invasive,” according to Ellen Jacquart of The Nature Conservancy, a species must cause harm. 

“The majority of non-native species cause no harm whatsoever, and some are even beneficial,” Jacquart said. Mediterranean geckos might be considered invasive in other parts of the world, particularly if their presence pushes out native gecko species, but here in Tulsa, they are just a friendly non-native species snacking on our bugs. 

Like Canada geese and rodents, Mediterranean house geckos seem to thrive in human-built spaces. My neighborhood colony has an ideal situation: bushes along the building’s perimeter offer shade during the day and cover at night; the painted brick walls, which happen to be gecko-colored, radiate heat when the evenings get cool; and the lights attract all manner of insects to eat. 

Their primary predators are cats, which are also abundant in my neighborhood, but the geckos are quick to scurry out of sight when they sense danger. And if they’re not quite fast enough to outrun a cat, they can autotomize, or shed, their tails. (This process explains the stump-tailed gecko I once saw: It had lost its tail and was in the process of growing a new one.)

I have come to believe my neighborhood gecko colony is quite large; an average evening of gecko-spotting yields five or six, ranging in size from two-inch juveniles to five-inch adults. My record for the summer is 10 in a single night. I count them as I walk, in a whisper, as I used to count deer on family road trips. 

Like deer hiding in the dappled light between trees, the geckos are elusive, and the elusiveness is part of their charm. A few nights ago, I looked at a wall that initially appeared uninhabited; a moment later, as if snapping into place, my vision changed and I saw there were in fact four adult geckos, hiding in plain sight. One was melting itself into shadow, another was stretched alongside a metal rail, and a third was curved around a light fixture. The fourth was just a little face, peeking out from underneath a metal sign. 

I felt as though I was in a living example of one of the hidden picture puzzles I loved in my childhood, and laughed in delight. Just as with the hidden pictures, the reward isn’t in the found object but in the seeing itself. For me, learning to see geckos has meant learning to see my neighborhood through different eyes, a reminder that the world holds all kinds of secrets when we learn how to look.