PROVIDENCE JOURNAL (Rhode Island) 29 July 06 Animal clinic searches for stolen gecko (Gerald M. Carbone)
Warwick: Among geckos Holly was a true gem. She was what is called a "color morph" of a "high yellow" tint, freckled with black spots.
Her early years were tough, burdened by an illness that nearly killed her. Then life took a turn for the better: she was adopted by the staff at West Shore Animal Clinic, the people who saved her life and nurtured her so well that, when last seen, she was a little too plump for a leopard gecko.
"She loved to eat," said Jen Lazaroff, a veterinary technician who loves lizards, and snakes, and all things reptilian. "She had her own personality. Feisty. She was curious."
"You put a live mealworm in there and she'd eat it with gluttonous glee," said Dr. Michele M. Consiglio, an associate veterinarian at West Shore. "She was a pig."
Holly had recently been upgraded to a larger cage of multiple tiers, and she was living large in the waiting room of the clinic when somebody stole her.
"She was just an innocent creature," said Lazaroff. "She was being cared for here, and now we don't know. It's just horrible."
Holly was last seen entertaining clients in the clinic's waiting room on June 26. She was always off-limits to touching because her "feisty" personality included a propensity for biting. Plus she's probably a carrier of a contagious fungal infection.
The infection, called cryptococcosis, is what almost killed her. Holly's former owner kept a collection of reptiles, and she gave Holly to West Shore Animal Clinic because even if she survived treatment, she could never again be exposed to other reptiles.
People, too, can contract crytococcosis, and a person with a suppressed immune system, such as a chemotherapy or AIDS patient, could die from it.
So the clinic wants Holly back, for her own good and for human health as well.
Holly's small for a gecko, about 7 inches from nose to tail. She has the telltale yellow skin and black spots of a leopard gecko, 1 of 800 species of gecko.
The leopard gecko generally hails from the deserts of Pakistan, though it's also found wild in India, Iran and Afghanistan. They'll thrive in captivity if given equal amounts of ultraviolet light by day and black light by night, plus occasional dinners of live mealworms or size-suitable crickets.
Holly's special diet included so-called "Shake 'N Bake" mealworms encrusted with vitamins and calcium.
"If you can maintain a perfect environment these guys will live forever," said Consiglio. Holly is somewhere between 5 and 7 years old; there have been documented cases of a female gecko living to 19 and a male to 27, so Consiglio said she still has hope that Holly is alive after one month on the lam. She knows that Holly did not escape on her own because when the theft was discovered her cage door was closed, and she didn't pull it shut behind her.
Now a flier pleading for her return, no questions asked, is posted in the waiting room on her empty cage.
(The West Shore Animal Clinic's phone number is (401) 738-3447.)
Animal clinic searches for stolen gecko