Lizards in the house

If you have one in your house, how do you catch it? I'm from a place with no lizards so I am not sure what to do
-@Filamretire

I believe humans cannot catch them. We can trap  them, for example if it is between a window and screen and you close the window. Your best solution may be to get a cat; they can catch them.

Let it be - it'll eat the roaches lol!

Let it be - it'll eat the roaches lol!
-@tammas2000

They crap all over the place.

To the OP when we first took over this house we had dozens inside, I put fly wire on all the windows and slowly eradicated them. lol you have to be quick though, I found in the end that fly spray knocks them for a sixer.

I leave them alone outside and it's nice to watch the big Tokays chasing the smaller geckos, the bonus here is I never see a spider or other critters here.

Cheers, Steve.

@danfinn  hmmm.... So crap... or live roaches... I will take the crap!!.  We have a few geckos in our place... I view them as my personal bug exterminators... lol... Inkeave them alone... our housekeeper keeps everything clean... all good 👍🏻

@Filamretire I made a trap by cutting off the end of a plastic bottle and inverting it so as to make a funnel going into the bottle and baited it with bugs. I made the one in the photo as an example but it should be a bigger bottle, 500 ml water bottles work great. It works like a crab trap, they crawl in but can't find their way out. I set it in a window sill behind a curtain and forgot about it for a couple days. When I thought to check it I had two big ones. For the smaller ones I put glue boards on the window sills and caught a bunch. The glue boards are intended as mouse traps and you can order them on Lazada or Shopee. I had 7 small ones on one glue board and tiny ants picked them clean so I had perfect lizard skeletons. The ants could walk on the glue without getting stuck. I put weather strips around the doors and the whisker style sweeps at the bottom of the doors. Your doors and windows have to seal very well to keep them out.

For ants and roaches I use the stuff in the photo. You can buy a box of 50 packets on Lazada dirt cheap. We never had much of a roach problem but I have seen a couple in the bathrooms. I sprinkled a little in the hollow area under the toilets and I haven't seen one since. The ant bait works really well. Sprinkle a little in their path and no more ants. It even works on the big red nest building ants that have a bite worse than a Georgia fire ant. The red ants were building nests in our mango and miracle fruit trees by gluing leaves together. The locals would cut off the branch to get rid of the ants but the survivors would just build another nest. I sprinkled a packet on top of a nest and the next day I opened the nest to find a huge red tangled mass of dead ants, and they never came back.

@Moon Dog Woww, awesome stuff, thanks for the tips! Yeah red ants are a thing, good to see a solution. Snakes I have no worries, plenty snakes where I'm from, albeit wife will scream the walls down LOL but lizards, traps are the thing until we are used to them enough to not care This one is going in my notebook!

@Filamretire There was a rat eating holes in my dwarf coconuts. We were losing a coconut a day so I made the trap in the photo with what I had laying around. I baited it with bread and placed it in the coconut tree and got him on the first night. That was a couple months ago and I haven't lost a coconut since so this little guy was the only one doing it.

@Moon Dog good stuff... I will try that ant bait... I have been using the syringe one... works well... but little soendy.  I see yours on shoppee for 10 packs for 57 peso... and 50 packs for 250 peso .. I hate ants!! Thanks!  (:

danfinn said. . . . .They crap all over the place.

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What's bigger ant, fly or lizard crap?

danfinn said. . . . .They crap all over the place.
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What's bigger ant, fly or lizard crap?
-@Enzyte Bob

Lizard, the size of ant and fky crap is insignificant 😂 but since we put up screens to block insects we have no more lizards either. Also, lizards do not catch many insects if you really watch them. There may be 10 moths flying around a light at night and it takes hours for the lizard to catch one, if it catches anything at all.

well, i like the lizards. They get rid of quite a few bugs; ants, flys and roaches. You have to put with some black poop  - it's small in size. But I'd rather have that than the bugs.

The lizards vs bugs? if you don't like the lizards get a cat.

danfinn said. . . . .They crap all over the place.
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I said  . . . . What's bigger ant, fly or lizard crap?
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danfinn replied. . . . . Lizard, but since we put up screens to block insects we have no more lizards either. Also, lizards do not catch many insects if you really watch them. There may be 10 moths flying around a light at night and it takes hours for the lizard to catch one, if it catches anything at all.

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How big are your lizards? The largest ones I observe in our house are about 1 1/2 inches. The only insects we have in our house are tiny ants, not an appetizer for our lizards, but the main course.

the ones we had ranged from 2.5inches to 3.5inches. We had 2 or 3 inside the house and 3 outside. It was not as good as those electronic bug eating machines, but they did eat some.

Alternative is bug spray and bug poisons.

@Enzyte Bob Much bigger than that. The largest one was about 13 inches. It had a loud screech at night. 1-1/2 inches is a baby and I would probably ignire it. Eventually I trapped the 13" between window and screen and got rid of it. We used to have small ants but got rid of them with ant killer. Whatever ants my useless lizards consumed had no effect on the ant population but Baygon works fine.

well, i like the lizards. They get rid of quite a few bugs; ants, flys and roaches. You have to put with some black poop - it's small in size. But I'd rather have that than the bugs.
The lizards vs bugs? if you don't like the lizards get a cat.
-@stuleer

I like them too. Not a problem and not many other pests, except ants still come in. By the way a bit of WD40 helps with that, lol - I don't think they like the smell.

@Filamretire

Don't catch them. Let them go. They eat all those insectes you don't want in your house (ants, corcroaches, mosquitoes...).

haha, what i meant to say, get a cat if you want to get rid of the lizards.

haha, what i meant to say, get a cat if you want to get rid of the lizards.
-@stuleer

We have a few cats hanging around from the neighbours properties and the funny thing is they can't climb the rendered walls where the small geckos are, the big tokays catch them, beautiful big gecko and too big to get into the house, no bugs inside or out.

I put a bug zapper in the house 3/4 months ago and nada, turned it off and in storage.

Cheers, Steve.

We have Giecos. They drive my puppies crazy. Every night you hear them "toeCOO! toeCOO!" Agggghh!!! My pups chased a lot of them off the property, but it's like a never-ending battle. And we're losing.

Lone Wolf NYC

danfinn said. . . . .They crap all over the place.
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What's bigger ant, fly or lizard crap?
-@Enzyte Bob

We seem to be escalating here in poop size. Lizard's to catch the flies and ants, roaches, then somebody above suggested a cat. If we keep upsizing and are not careful we will have snake poop all over the place

The cats can't climb walls, I've never seen a gecko on the floor or ground. Major renos here and this afternoon  we started to remove a section of roof for a 7 metre long verandah and new lounge room, said to the steel worker there is 1 or 2 tokays living here and he looked at me, what's a Tokay? Tokay, Toko what ever, 1 foot long geckos and don't hurt them.

As we started demolishing an existing verandah 1 or 2 of the tokays started barking, usually only at night, the steel worker and his labourer looked at me and said "what's that?" My Tokays I said proudly, turns out there were 3 of them comfortably nestled between 2 joists, all the masons and labourers came to look as well as most had never seen one let alone 3 cuddled together.

I hope our works and renos don't scare them off as they are good critters and harmless, keep the bugs down also and have an interesting smile when you run into one face to face.

Cane toads are a different story and slowly eradicating now the fences are up, no cows, goats or dogs.

Cheers, Steve.

@bigpearl With 12" tokay (toku) geckoes living inside the home, you can surprise them or they surprise you especially when going into closed spaces like a small bathroom or even sitting on a couch.

They do bite.

From wiki: Tokay geckos are generally aggressive, territorial, and can inflict a strong bite. Though common in the pet trade, the strong bite of the tokay gecko makes it ill-suited for inexperienced keepers.[12] In addition, the strength of the bite depends on the gecko's size; larger (usually male) tokay geckos are capable of piercing skin, which often results in immediate bleeding.

And the bite is full of bacteria so see a doctor for infection meds if one of those three bites you accidentally 👍

Great, now we've got cane toads to worry about! Ima have to get me a mongoose to eat all the critters!

@danfinn Thanks I needed to hear this. Time to pull out the big guns.

Lone Wolf NYC

@bigpearl Cane toads are a big problem. My dog likes to go after them but the toxins they secrete make her sick. I have a long reach pickup tool just for cane toads. I slam them on the concrete 3 or 4 times until their tongue is hanging out then toss them over the fence. I lost count at 50 something but I'm sure I'm over 100 now. I go out at 3 or 4 am when they are just sitting on the sidewalk and spotlight them the way I did bullfrogs in the US when I was gigging. I haven't seen one for a while so hopefully I got the last one. Like you I now have hollow block fences around the entire perimeter of the property so the only way the toads can get in is under the front gate and I've never seen toads at the front. They were coming in from the cow pasture before we finished the back fence. I've fished a couple out of the pool and that was when I declared holy war on the critters.

@Filamretire We had a few geckos inside the house and lots outside at night around the terrace light.  They took care of all the bugs. Living in Hawaii for 3 years it was good luck for them to be in your house. My fiancés son found a king cobra a few days ago under his bed! That nobody ever would want.

@danfinn.

Never seen a tokay in the house, they are too big to get under the doors, the little ones wander in from time to time.

Ants are an issue as others have said but if you keep things clean they don't come in the house,,,, the red ants on the other hand are nasty but they don't come into the house and we try to leave them alone as the attack the termites.

As soon as the glass pool fencing and windows on the oceanside go in then we will get a dog or 2 to hopefully keep the cats out.

Cheers, Steve.

@bigpearl My first night in the Phils (7 years ago) was in Purta Princessa at a hotel called Balay Tuko, or Home of the Tuko. A local explained to me what they were, I only saw a few but I heard them every night... the sound they make sounds like "TOO-COH", ence the name. So these little critters will always be my Filipino friends and I love that they reduce the bugs I detest. I like that you are protecting yours Steve. Hope all goes well on your renovations.

Donald