Do you have tiny, unwanted, gecko guests in your home?
One sign is their black/brown droppings with a white tip. An even clearer sign is if you see one crawling up your wall! Although an ally against insects and spiders, geckos can be a pest in their own right, so sometimes steps need to be taken to remind them that they’re unwelcome in your home.
Household solutions
Geckos can be good for bug control, but sometimes you just need them out of your home. You can
use a variety of products you may already have to get rid of them: If you have eggshells, you can place them around your home to scare off geckos.
If you have mothballs, you can place them around to repel geckos. If you have coffee and tobacco, you can make a gecko poison. If you have garlic cloves, you can use them to repel geckos with
the odor. If you have onions, cut some up to keep geckos at bay. If you have cayenne pepper or Tabasco sauce, you can make a home-made pepper spray.
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Removing Geckos from your home
Place some eggshells. This is a very effective and inexpensive way to scare away geckos: they see egg-shells and they think “predator.” Leave two eggshell halves around your home, such as at outdoor entryways, or in the kitchen.
- Do not crush the eggshells, leave them in two halves.
- One two-halves pair at every entrance should be enough: the geckos just need to run into it, then they’ll run away from it.
- To keep the eggshells fresh, change them every 3 to 4 weeks.
- Plant some mothballs. Moth-balls target moths, cockroaches, ants, flies – and geckos! A real household panacea! Leave some under the stove, refrigerator, or sink to repel geckos.
Set sticky traps. Many of the insects that geckos eat are drawn to light, so, oftentimes, geckos will hang out in those areas. Placing some flypaper near light sources will not only catch geckos’ pesky
food source, but will likely catch the geckos themselves.
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- A good position to place the fly-paper is on the inside of the light bulb’s shade/housing.
- You can also set glue boards or sticky cards near windows or other outdoor entryways.
- If you find a live gecko stuck in one of your sticky traps, you can unstick it and set it free by pouring vegetable oil over the trap. It’s nasty – but humane!
- Make a coffee and tobacco ball. Using moist coffee grounds and some tobacco powder, form a small ball with your hands and stick it on the end of a toothpick. Put this near where the geckos are nesting or where they might easily find it, like an outdoor entryway. The geckos will consume some of this ball and die.