Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ok I have wild geckos that roam around my yard eating bugs and I enjoy them, as I do most animals, quite a lot. Every now and then one of them manages to make their way into my house which is fine with me but there are a few dangers to them inside...one being my cat..the other being glue traps that the exterminator sets out to "monitor any bugs that may be in the house". Unfortunately I have found a dead gecko in one of the glue traps before, I can only assume he saw the bugs and thought "alright easy food!" Today it happened again except this time the gecko was still alive. As bad as I felt finding the dead one I felt even worse when I found this one so I decided to try to get it free. Funny enough I remembered a movie I saw where a guy frees a rat from a glue trap with oil(Yes..Willard) so I thought I would give it a try. I took the glue trap outside to a shaded area and used a medicine dropper (I cleaned it thoroughly with hot water and then rinsed it with dechlorinated water) and mineral oil and proceded to pretty much coat the sticky surface with the oil. Long story made slightly shorter, the gecko did manage to get free but it did loose its' tail. While I tried my best not to completely coat the poor thing in oil it did still get a good amount on its' underside and feet and I'm wondering if this will have any negative effects on it. In short what are his chances and is there anything I should do differently if this happens again?

wild lix will drop their tail to get away from a preditor, i wouldnt worry about that, and mineral oil is pretty harmless, may give him a stonach upset if he eats a bit, but her got a far better chance now they a long death on a glue trap, good job! (though in the future id advise against glue trap for anything, they are really inhumaine)
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hanging out under heat lights burns up my brain cells!!