Living in the Australian rain forest can be challenging. Especially when critters invade your private space.
Last week I came in late and noticed some things had fallen off my bedside table. At first I thought maybe a snake had got in so...
I LOOKED UNDER THE BED...
nothing.
I looked behind the bedside table...
nothing so
I pulled back my sheets...
just in case something was in my bed... to my surprise I discovered this rare specimen. It is Leaf-tailed Gecko. It was about 9-10 inches long, so quite a large specimen.There are a few varieties of leaf-tailed lizards, this one is one of the larger species. I had one living on my bathroom wall a couple of years ago, but it was a lot smaller.
I have seen the shedded skin of this rare beauty on my floor over the last few months and thought it looked too large to be a lizard. The skin is easily definable from a snake skin because of the feet, the delicate fingers attached to the main body skin.
I feel blessed to have such amazing native wildlife sharing my living space. I haven't seen this one since that night, but I'm sure he is sill around.
I also have a microbat living in my bedroom, they are very secretive and hide when you are around, but I hear it after I turn off the light at night. They feed on mosquitoes and other small insects, so they help to keep your living space free of insects. Their natural habitat has become threatened in Australia due to development, so more of them are coming into houses for shelter. I work with wildlife rescue, doing the records and I notice that the numbers of microbats coming into care has increased a lot over the past few years.
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