Stories about wall geckos are flying around and all kinds of news from the incredulous to unbelievable are posted on Social media platforms. They say Geckos are the most dangerous household killers, even more dangerous than snakes and can wipe out a whole family if not totally eradicated from the home. There is the talk about geckos licking toothbrushes and poisoning the user. While i do not want to dispute this because i am not a microbiologist, ecologist, nor an ecosystem biologist but from my little research i came up with this piece that might educate someone somewhere and reduce the morbid fear of geckos.

Wall geckos are certainly irritating but they have definite role they play in the ecosystem of the house, therefore they balance the micro-system of the house. Geckos are invertebrates that feed on certain insects that chip away walls or buildings. Extermination of Geckos means houses will become rubles in due time because of the activities of insects such as cockroaches, roaches, spiders, ants and bugs.

I do not know how plausible but sound logical to me. Besides we all grew up with Geckos roaming freely in the house yet we never heard of poisoning from them nor killing us especially our ignorant grandparents and prolly our parents?

Growing up, we were told that it was a taboo to kill geckos so they roamed freely around like they owned it. I even heard that geckos are traditionally used to cure certain ailments.

How many times have we washed our surface water tanks? How many times have we found dead geckos or other slimy creatures there? Therefore i believe that geckos have zilch hazards on our health if at all prolly just little.

Nevertheless, we need to still cover our foods and water for health reasons. Geckos live in crevices and cracks of the walls, all we need to do is to close the gaps especially between walls and windows to prevent them entering the house.

According to Fr. Paul Kolade-Tubi who says he is currently researching into gecko-cide and sourcing for scientific evidences of pathogenic geckos lest we kill off all African geckos in the name of superstition. According to him, scientific data say that there are no single poisonous gecko is the world. He also maintained that there are no single poisonous Lizards in Africa. Even though there are two or three types of lizards that are poisonous but they are not found in Africa. He said culturally, they are called ‘Omo ile’ which means ‘Children of the house’ in Yoruba land.

I gathered that if you want to rid geckos from the house you use gecko repellant like garlic or garlic and salt. You also need to keep house very clean from insects because they are the reasons for influx of geckos.