Reptile & Amphibian Forums

When you go on holiday, who looks after your Gecko, I don't see my nextdoodr neighbor fishing out mealworms and my friends live too far away, what am I going to do?? Thankyou

-Allie

P.S- sorry for bugging all you guys with my questions, I just need to find out stuff if I want to get a gecko

Well, without sounding too much like I'm on a soapbox, as the person who got me involved often says, "They're a responsibility and you take on that responsibility." My friend ranted for quite a while when someone posted here that they got their baby gecko(s) and then less than a month later and asked if they'd be ok not being fed for a week because s/he was going out of town. NO WAY!

When you have a baby or a juvi I would never think of leaving town, it is just like having a human baby, until they're grown you are kind of stuck. They should be fed everyday and it is hard to find someone to do that. On the other hand, if you have an adult, who needs to be fed every other day, then you have some more flexibility.

We feed crickets (long argument, we feel it is psychologically better to allow them to hunt) and we have small plastic containers with holes set up... think of it as single serve cricket containers. We thought we'd have to leave town last year and have someone feed our geckos who had never before. We used small, washed, ventilated, food containers with a few crickets in each and a bit of their food. We hadn't figured out if our replacement feederperson would be able to dust them or not, but with the single serve containers, anyone could easily take one out and dump it into the appropriate enclosure. Everything was labeled with dates and names.

We had a herper friend of ours take care of our geckos for 3 days this summer, our experience is that we'd rather have someone who didn't know what to do and would just follow our directions, do it next time. The fact of the matter is, we all get pretty hyper about how to take care of our guys and someone who can follow directions to a T is the best, and that may or may not be someone who "knows what they are doing", since we all do it just a bit differently.

Good question, I don't mean to sound angry at you, only that we here read too many posts about people not thinking. By asking before you have the animal, thank you, thank you, thank you for thinking! In summary, sure you can go on holiday, but it takes a bit more planning than your average cat would, but then who wants a cat?
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0.1 Albino Leo Gecko
0.1 Crested Gecko
1.0 Dear Boyfriend
Departed: Harvey and Spock

I'd recommend against children taking care of them unless they have their own leos and those being in top health. The temptation to play with them might be too great.

Vets occasionally can recommend pet sitters but make sure you let them know it's for your reptiles. In my case the reptile vet's own staff does some sitting on the side and reptiles are not uncommon. Only use them if you are comfortable with the care they can give (unfortunately most sitters are dog and cat qualified...)

Best option by far is to get a trusted friend to take care of them. Plan to take some time going over exactly what to do with them, then leave an instruction sheet behind that states the same info (in case they forget). Buy them lunch or dinner. Make it worth their while and let them know you appreciate their help.

Last resort for an extended trip might be to move your pet to your friend's house but this causes stress for the gecko and I wouldn't advise it unless you've run out of all other options. Better to have them cared for in their current location.

N.F.

Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou guys! I really needed that one sorted out , I will ponder on what I might do if this situation might occur, but I will make sure that it will never happen with a baby leo Thanks!

-Allie