Hawaii is a truly magical place, and our little piece of paradise here at Paradise Meadows is a beautiful tropical rainforest. There are lots of wonderful things that make living in a tropical rainforest a joy — lush greenery, cooling trade winds, temperate climate — too many things to count. But there is one thing that tropical rainforests like ours have too much of. Bugs. All sorts of bugs. Flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches, centipedes — feel free to shudder along with me.

We are, however, blessed with a totally organic, sustainable method of pest control in the form of tiny lizards called geckos. If you don’t live in a tropical climate you probably only know geckos from the Geico commercials. The geckos that live in our house don’t speak with a British accent or stand on their hind legs, but they are, nonetheless, cute.

We have a little video showing a gecko stalking its prey. Believe it or not, the gecko in this video was moving slowly and inexorably toward a fly, but it’s moving so slowly that it seems like it’s not moving at all!

There are 8 species of geckos that have made Hawaii their home. The gecko in the video is a Gold Dust Day Gecko. All were introduced at one point or another in Hawaiian history, so none are truly “indigenous”, but some, especially the common house gecko, have been here long enough to be thought of as Hawaiian and to have a place in Hawaiian culture and mythology. And it won’t come as a surprise that it’s considered to be good luck to have these little exterminators in your home.

Lately we’ve been feeling like we need a bigger army of geckos than we’ve managed to attract. We suspect our cat, Pico, has been keeping the gecko population down, and we’ve given him a stern talking-to about that.