LONGISH POST [SORRY] BUT HOPEFULLY USEFUL INFO ON RAT/SQUIRREL CONTROL . . . .
Lived many years in a wonderful old woodframe house built in 1925 in Tampa's Seminole Heights.
We knew that we had roaches but in Fall would start to hear rats moving into the walls, beginning when the year began to cool off before winter. Rats would move to inside our walls to nest where it provided some warmth from the cooler outside temperatures.
Because we were having such a plague of (American) cockroaches I began researching on effective roach controls, like boric acid powder. But enventually read about Tokay Geckoes' favorite food being cockroaches, plus Tokays are nocturnal (as are roaches), are cold tolerant to about zone 9a, live about 25 years, will stay in one part of your house as long as there is a food and water source (the kitchen), do not 'make friends' with the homeowner, and have very discrete and non-smelly toilet habits choosing to defecate in one hidden place all the time. Plus the feces are dry thin, odorless flakes; a form in which eaten roaches became that was just fine with me!
All those things about Tokay Geckoes seemed very positive so I located some Tokays for sale at a local petshop. Went and bought a juvenile about 9 months old who was only 9-inches long, but who would mature at around 12-inches when fully grown. Paid $16.00 for him, took him home and released him in the kitchen whereupon he ran behind the 'fridge right away and hid.
Only once did he venture into the bathroom on the other side of the house and got stuck in the porcelain bathtub which he couldn't climb out of. When I relocated him back to the kitchen he bit my hand hard enough for the needle-row of tiny 'teeth' to draw blood to my skin's surfare. He was quite strong in my grasp!!
But the trauma of being relocated back to the kitchen stuck with him apparently because after that he stayed in the kitchen where each evening he 'set up shop' on the edge of the kitchen counter where he could survey roaches up there and down on the floor. He was very expert at stalking roaches and we could hear a sharp TAP aganist the wall or floor each time he would grab one. Soon the population of visible roaches began to decrease.
Then he found his way into the kitchen walls to search for more roaches. This proved a good thing in the long run, so now back to the autumn arrival of rats in our walls . . .
They came in each Fall to breed and nest their babies inside the walls. I would wake up to hear the rat babies squeaking during the night when I was in bed sleeping. Apparently the Tokay could hear them, too, cuz he came looking for them. He must've eaten one or two babies from the nests per night and after about four or five days, no more squeaking to be heard. This happened again the next Fall and the one thereafter. Each year, new rat nests with the babies eaten by the Tokay!
He lasted 12 years 'til we had to have the house tented for termites one year and he wouldn't let me catch him, so he died in the tenting.
He was a good investment, self-sufficient, unobtrusive –except for his singing which could be loud and sometime startled a guest or neighbor who was visiting us during the late afternoon or early evening!
He proved his worth and as a side benefit kept down our rat population (prolly fruit rats) somewhat by raiding the nests regularly each year. Plus I am certain that, given the right situation, a Tokay Gecko would raid squirrel nests, too. Might be worth a try . . .
OK — HTH
Paul M.
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