Fancy Dance	(Super) Giant Tremper Albino (of Moose) 7/14/04 Male 11" tail to nose (approx) 71 grams (average lean) to 80 grams fattened out.
6/07	7/07
11/07	11/07

It's difficult to get a real appreciation for FD's size out of these pics. The last two are at his whoppin 80 grams, very fat tail and filled out. I can't even get all of him in the web cam without backing it up too far from the length of his tail. I showed him to VMS herps where I got him from and they're sure he's really a super giant. I'd compare him to a 4-5 week old kitten.

Jungle Jool	Jungle, Tail Stripe 11/21/04 Female 8" tail to nose (approx) 40 grams
7/07	11/07

Susie Q	Melanistic 6/30/04 Female 9" tail to nose (approx) 65 grams (average)
6/07	11/07

The New Guys

Bean	Super Giant Tremper Albino (of Moose) 6/1/07 Male 45 grams
11/07	11/07

Hopi	Mack Snow 6/11/07 Male 40 grams
11/07	11/07

Tawny	Mack Snow 2/07 Female 45 grams
11/07	11/07

Rain	Mack Snow Jungle 3/15/07 Female 45 grams
11/07	11/07

Pepper	Mack Snow 6/12/07 Female 40 grams
11/07	11/07

These guys are even more beautiful than the pictures really do them any justice. Wonderful patterns and particularly Fancy Dance has a pair of 'I Dream of Genie' kind of eyes that are just uncanny with awareness and interest, even if most of the time the stare I'm getting is, "did you bring the food?"

Fancy Dance

Fancy Dance is bigger than his females but more of a gentle giant. He's always been an eager fellow when it has been feeding time on crickets. They all get pretty eager for the dashing around but now that they're eating mealworms too he's a regular hungry jack. He loves the mealworms so much it's kind of humorous because it's sorta "oh, OH! you brought the mealworms! Me first, me first, is that your finger? Oh man just drop some already - you weren't going to eat that were you? No wait, that's my mealworm!"

Well, I think he's a card anyway. It took him half a year to really show all of his character. The first few months I had him he didn't think much of me. He liked Jungle Jool just fine when I introduced her to his tank for the first time. I thought there would be a dominance problem but he pretty much let her just have the reign and didn't seem intimidated himself at all. It didn't take them a week to get along perfectly. If I had to take him out of his tank though he would struggle big time and sometimes even hiss at me. That was startling for me at first as well. I never heard a lizard hiss before.

He'll still wag his tail at me a bit if I take him out just to take his picture but otherwise, he'll stand being held with allot less struggle for just a moment, than he used to give me until set down.

FD and JJ seemed comfy enough living together, so I put the both of them back into the bigger tank with Susie Q and Missy. I thought for sure there might be a dom problem because Susie Q made all the rules when it was just her, Missy and JJ. It did take a longer adjustment but it was only by about two weeks. Jungle Jool was already at home with the other girls and the time away hadn't messed anything up for her. Mainly it was Fancy Dance having to figure out what Susie Q was up to and deciding if he wanted to just let her have it. Given his size, the females have always just moved aside and gave up on the tail wagging when he's ignored it. The rest of the time they don't seem to mind sharing a spot at all and others are a bit designated.

Susie Q prefers one particular hide to the cool side just for herself while Fancy Dance is normally the one who likes to lay around the mess he's made out of the bowl of calcium powder from scratching it around. He likes to lay in the bowl itself at times but more often he just likes it spread out everywhere. He'd love it if I had sand substrate but I just give them a very generous helping of the calcium powder instead of going that far.

Jungle Jool

I think I'd call Jungle Jool the swashbuckler of the group. She's very active or rather, maybe even a little faster on her feet than the others. Being the smaller one I thought she might end up getting the short end of the stick with the others but she has her place and doesn't really get brunted at any time. They all get along very well and have ample space, even in the substrate box all together. Still, she's more of an opportunist than a tail wagger.

She tends to hang around Fancy Dance more than Susie Q. Such as during feeding she'll be the closest to Fancy Dance. In the melee of crickets it doesn't really matter, crickets go everywhere but they do tend to position themselves to favorite spots to snatch for them. In sharing the mealworms Fancy Dance and Jungle Jool are at the head or getting them from my fingers and the bowl first but SuseQ hasn't really mastered an art for mealworms herself yet. When they're in my fingers, she climbs my hand up my arm and when the other two are eating, she wanders around them but ... hrm, nothin looks like crickets ...

Susie Q

I like to think of Susie Q as a kind of matriarch. She really is the first gecko and the one to convince me I feel pretty bonded to these guys. When I first got her, she had a molt about a month later that wasn't going well and I had to soak her in a bowl of warm water and help her out. It made me feel that much closer to her and I was pretty awed with what I was doing. It was almost like playing nurse maid and helping an animal give birth. She never did struggle with me all that much at any time of having to be handled. I kind of figured as long as I was calm, she would be too and that's how we always played it. I guess I've shown SuseQ a bit of favoritism, especially when her role with the other females she shared her tank with came out to play.

She was the tail wagger, establishing all of her spots first and then Missy and Jungle Jool could follow up after that. There was never any fighting, just the tail wagging which seemed to go unquestioned for SuseQ. After a while though it didn't seem to matter much at all as they became more sharing of their spots despite having plenty of room to be a little stingy.

SuseQ is actually a very laid back kinda gecko. She's the easiest of all to ever have to handle, even without food I can get her into my hand and just move her along but she also takes a little more coaxing to get to just move from one spot like out of the substrate box so I can spray it. With the others I just run their tail through my fingers to get them to drag their feet getting out but her I might have to just pick up and set her elsewhere in the tank. These days a tail wagging from her might come from the cricket spree or over by her favorite hide, just to let the others know she's picked her spot and now's not a good time to come near it.

Bean, Tawny and Rain

I just recently got Bean, Tawny and Rain. Right now they're spending their first days in solitude so I'm not really sure what's going on. They received their first crickets the second night from when they came through the mail. I think Bean might have eaten one or two of his.

At this time they're mostly hiding but come out to peek around. They really have no idea where they are hehe, poor Bean, he's the smallest, ironically enough, and in the biggest tank ever for a little guy.

All three of them are in three different tanks and I've covered the sides so they can't see beyond inside the tank itself or up. I'll be leaving them like this for a couple of weeks, at least until they've gotten used to the tank itself and me feeding them crickets regularly. Only after that I'll start trying to take the coverings off to get them used to yet something else. If I have to do anything like mist the substrate box or some such, I'll do it during the day time hours since they'll be most active at night.

Thus far, Bean is kinda wild child, very. So he might be taking the longest to get used to anything, especially having a 20gal tank to boggle his mind with. Even the substrate box looks down right colossal against him. He's barely past hatchling.

Tawny is about 6 months old, still very small but she was slightly tamer. Not really by much but at least she hasn't freaked like Bean did. She's hiding just as much as he is right now though.

Rain wanted out of the plastic bowl she came in even before I could get the lid open. She's in a 20gal tank of her own but seems at least slightly more like tame. She's much more curious than I've been able to catch the other two being at any rate. She's out looking around more than she's hiding, looks right at me without dodging, so she might be the first one to have the cover taken from the side of her tank.

Hopi and Pepper

Aren't the original gecko's I had hoped for. The first ones died in the transport due to an unexpected storm and summer heat. I got these two though and named the new male Hopi and the new female Pepper.

The Gecks

They're all able to be handled now that they got the idea of feeding time. Bean is the only one who doesn't really know what to think of being handled at the moment. He still acts like he might want to be a wild child. He's kind of a frisky fellow.