A YUCATAN BANDED GECKO

One night this week arriving late from Hotel Reef I found the most beautiful and colorful of all of Yucatan's lizardy animals crawling beneath my big wooden doors into my room. It was the Yucatan Banded Gecko, COLEONYX ELEGANS, which you can see at http://www.geckosunlimited.com/elegans.htm,

I think he may have been stuck beneath the door, for when I opened the door a bit more he just lay there as if he were a little dazed, allowing me to pick him up for a good look. From the first glance it was clear that this was an unusual gecko species.

Most geckos possess paddle-like toe tips equipped with special scales enabling them to climb walls. This gecko's toes were sharply pointed and he couldn't climb walls. He was strictly a terrestrial species. Our other native gecko species lack moveable eyelids, yet this one had them. Also unusual for a gecko, the pupils of this one's eyes were narrow, vertical slits instead of round ones. When I let the little critter go he walked away making a very soft, catlike mewing sound, very unlike the obstreperous call I told you about last week made by my Common House Geckos.

Since this species was so strikingly patterned I figured the local people would regard it as deadly. The next morning I showed a picture of the species to Roberto the gardener and I wasn't disappointed:

"This is the most dangerous one we have," he assured me. "It stings with its tail."

Of course none of our geckos or lizard-like creatures sting with their tails and none is dangerous in the least, except possibly our Black Iguanas, which are so large (nearly three feet) that they can inflict painful but non-venomous bites. (In self defense one got hold of the throat of the hacienda's main iguana- chasing dog the other day and Roberto and Francisco had to pry its mouth open!)

Probably the reason people here say this gecko stings with its tail is that when it feels endangered it raises its body by straightening its legs, inflates its throat, and waves its tail ominously but innocently.

Yucatan Banded Geckos have a fairly limited distribution, occurring only in southern Mexico's lowlands into Guatemala and Belize.