A New Plant…and pet???

Last year, while browsing through my Ballard Designs catalog, I spotted a beautiful plant that I wanted for our cottage. This isn’t the exact photo, but it is the same plant on the bottom left of the picture.                                                                               {Source}

I ripped the page out of the catalog and took it to my local florist to see if she could tell me what it was and order one for me. She identified the beauty as a Split Leaf Philodendron, said they were easy to care for, and placed my order.

The last week of June, my plant was in. It was love at first site! Pardon the picture quality…this photo was taken by O…which is fabulous for a 4 year old…don’t you think? He loves taking pictures with the little Canon PowerShot camera he got for Christmas. He obviously sees me taking pictures all over the house…so this was one of the shots I found on his camera. But, I digress…this beauty was a welcome addition to our living room with its long limbs and dark green leaves against the white trim and built-ins.

When I got home from work Wednesday night, I was greeted by an extremely excited little guy…”mommy, mommy, look what I found…can I keep it as a pet”? I approached him pensively…since said pet was currently residing in a small plastic cup with saran wrap on top with holes cut into it to provide air. Imagine my surprise when I saw this:

Actually, surprise may be an understatement…there may have been some shrieking…”where did you find that”?? I was more horrified when the answer was “running across the carpet in the living room”. EEK! How on earth did a GECKO end up on my living room carpet…in West Michigan?! My plant! I gingerly peeked into the plant expecting to be attacked by a family of geckos…but saw only a bunch of white balls in the soil.

After consulting Google, I realized those were, in fact, EGGS! Eeeeek again. I attempted to get my neighbor, Lisa, to remove the formerly beautiful plant from the living room…but she refused citing her fear of snakes and reptiles in general…so we agreed to carry it onto the patio together…to protect the cottage from the gecko infestation we knew was imminent!

Once the offending plant was on the patio, Lisa and I had a much needed glass of wine while O used his “Backyard Safari Field Tools”  to carefully remove as many of the eggs as he could find from the soil of the plant. There were A LOT. I drank another glass of wine and was feeling much calmer by the time hubby arrived home and promptly told O that the gecko was “so cool” and “of course it can be your new pet”.

Stay tuned…apparently geckos are insectivores and usually live where it is HOT…which Michigan is right now! O has named him “Pickles”…hubby voted for “Phil” to represent the plant…but Pickles won out.

What about the plant? Well, after more research, it is apparently quite unusual for an egg to hatch in the air-conditioned house. Assuming he is just a sole survivor, I let the plant back onto our screened porch…hopefully it will make it back into the house by the end of the summer.

Does anyone know anything about caring for Geckos? Let me know!

Thanks for stopping by!