BIRMINGHAM NEWS (Alabama) 13 August 06 Geckos galore at Leeds home (Kathy Seale)
In the "gecko room" at Greg and Leann Christenson's house, a pair of vibrant green and red day geckos appear frozen, eyes wide and unblinking, on a crisscross of bamboo stalks.
"They're wondering who you are," says Leann, peering at Fred and Betty, who live in one of the 65-or-so clear plastic cages holding about 200 geckos at their Leeds home. That's where they run Leaping Lizards Day Geckos.
Geckos are shy, lizard-like reptiles who tend to hide when visitors peer in their cages, she says. "They're low on the food chain, so the first thing they want to do is get out of there."
They also vary in color, range from about 1 to 12 inches in length, with smaller ones living 3 to 5 years, and larger ones living up to 25 years. They lick their eyes when they're nervous and are soft, "like a peach," Leann says.
Their feet, replete with millions of tiny hairs that produce a static-cling effect, allow them to walk on walls, even ceilings.
They are not, the Christensons say, anything like the sassy, upright gecko of Geico fame.
"Oh, there's a lot of things wrong with the Geico gecko," Greg says, then grins. "But he's cute anyway."
For starters, there's no gecko that looks exactly like the Geico gecko, although the green, white-tummied astriata comes close. And geckos don't talk with an English accent, although they do occasionally emit a high-pitched squeal.
Temperaments vary between the species and breeds, but the tokay night gecko's reputation, in particular, is less than warm and fuzzy. Leann takes one of their tokays from its cage and cradles it on her arms, but he's clearly not happy. The tokay emits a fairly loud "Eeeee" then jumps from her arm to Greg's pant leg.
"We got yelled at, didn't we?" Greg says.
In the world of geckos, the Christensons are, if not rock stars, at least well-respected, and a go-to source for their care, feeding and breeding. They've sold almost 6,000 copies of their book, "Day Geckos in Captivity," to breeders and enthusiasts worldwide.
"They're the greatest," says Russ Gurley, a publisher and gecko enthusiast in Rochester, Minn., who says he encouraged the couple to write a book. "I felt like they are literally the world's best at keeping and breeding day geckos."
Leann, who spends up to six hours a day in the gecko room misting and cleaning cages, documenting changes and feeding her charges nectar made from baby food, and crickets, does admit to a certain expertise.
"I've been called `gecko whisperer,' because I can handle them when other people can't," Leann says. "I rarely get bitten.
Greg, a technical director overseeing exhibits, equipment and aquariums, at McWane Science Center, developed, among other things, a sophisticated system of computer-operated temperature and humidity controls for the incubators.
"There's a data logger in one of the incubators, which logs temperature and humidity every five minutes, so we can produce graphs," Greg says.
Adds Leann: "He's the genius behind this."
The couple sells their day geckos for $45 to $500 apiece, depending on the breed, to individuals and institutions such as the Tennessee Aquarium, which recently acquired five species. But their goal, they say, is more benevolent than monetary.
"If we can learn how to breed them successfully, we can pass that on to other breeders, and we won't have to go out into the wild to get them," Leann says.
Breeding certain species, it turns out, is a complex undertaking. Successful gecko breeding is temperature-dependent, but there's been very little research about which temperatures produce males and females for each breed, the couple says. So they conducted their own 10-year project that's defined the correct temperatures for the majority of the common species.
"I know that at 85 degrees, I get males and females," Leann says. "At 82 degrees, we only get females." They're still investigating the correct temperature for males.
Leann points to cage housing an inexpectata male and female, who were imported from the wild. Geckos can be found almost anywhere, but the geckos the Christensons specialize in, Phelsuma day geckos, come from Madagascar and the surrounding islands of the Indian Ocean.
"This is probably the most rare (day gecko) breeding project in the United States," Leann says. "This is year number two, and we finally got eggs to hatch."
Twelve years ago, when Greg bought their first gecko and they began to breed, names such as inexpectata didn't roll off their tongues.
Greg would make up little ditties to help us remember," Leann says. For example, "Little standingi, makes me want to sing-i," and "Little barbouri, licks me in the eye."
They no longer need the ditties, but they also don't have time for much of anything else besides their passion - their roomful of geckos.
"We don't get too many vacations," Greg says. "It's hard to find qualified people to take care of them."
Geckos galore at Leeds home