I was out of the office most of this week at a three-day workshop, and so couldn’t keep a motherly eye on the two reptilian eggs of an unknown species that were collected from a coastal forest in mid-December last year. On second thoughts, I should’ve brought them home, like I usually do.
When I returned to the office today, a colleague told me that she saw geckos in the tank.
“?! They’ve hatched?”
I could only find one of them, well-camouflaged within the leaf litter, a tiny 6.3cm thing which resembled a little Rye, a Gekko monarchus. The name ‘Ryester’ quickly caught on.
The other was nowhere to be seen; it might have slipped through the holes in the cover. I also found a piece of slough which looks like it might have come from the lower jaw. Ryester’s got some rough peeling patches - hatchlings moult this soon? Hardly three days’ old.
He’s also extremely skittish, skippy, and likes to pounce. If you touch his snout or stroke his head, he’ll open his mouth so wide that you can see his palate and all the way down his throat.
We’ll keep him for a while longer, until he has the chance to go on a short return boat ride and be released where he came from.
