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Gotta love Texas
Central Texas has all kinds of critters running around. We have tiny scorpions that blend in with our floors, millipedes that can outrun us, cute green lizards and black & white horned ones, tarantulas (which thank goodness I've only seen on the outside of our house), oodles of other spiders and bugs, and snakes.
I've read that Texas only has 4 types of poisonous snakes and a whole mess of nonvenomous ones. I don't really mind snakes a whole lot.
But I do mind going out to my garage, reaching for something on a shelf in the semi-lit space and hearing: tck tck tck tck tck tck.
At first I assumed it was because the shelf was swaying and something was knocking together, but the tck tck kept up even after I stilled it. So of course I froze in place and waited, and after about 10 seconds it stopped.
After about 10 more, I decided to take a step backwards, and sure enough - tck tck tck tck tck.
Rinse & repeat.
It didn't sound a whole lot like a rattlesnake, but I'm no herpestologist or whatever, so I was getting a bit nervous.
Eventually I got far enough away to walk back into the house, chat with Frank on yahoo messenger for a minute, and then go back out there and open up the garage for more light and for an escape route - for me or the creature, either way would be fine.
Well, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a four-inch gecko - which is like the godzilla of geckos compared to what we usually see. I dashed back inside to find my camera, and to google "gecko noises". Couldn't find a picture of him - the one here is what he looked like, though, minus the spider - but I found out that geckos are the only kind of lizards that make clicking noises. In fact, the name "gecko" comes from someone's interpretation of the sound he makes. (By that definition mine would've been named Ticko.)
Yay! They eat spiders!
You can listen to one here, if you're using Internet Explorer.Labels: clicking noise, gecko, lizard
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