Hey, hereās a little guide on befriending small wild reptiles.
My area mostly has green anoles, so theyāre who Iām experienced with. However Iāve used the same principles with house geckos (when relocating them) and it worked. I would suggest doing at least light research on local reptiles before attempting to handle them to know if theyāre dangerous first.
Also important to note- handling any wild animals will ALWAYS be for our benefit only and will be nothing but stress for the animal. This guide will be focused on reducing that stress as much as possible for the reptiles, but they will never really enjoy it. If you want to appreciate wildlife without affecting them at all, photography is a better bet. Also, if I get anything wrong here, call me out in any form, Iāll change it. I want this to be informative.
0.5. Donāt manhandle small animals. I would hope this would be common sense, but I grew up around people who would grab anoles and force them to bite onto things and carry them around like that. Theyāre fragile animals!
1. When I want to actually catch an anole, I try to corner it and coerce it onto my hand. This works, sometimes. More for things like geckos. But my general rules for myself for catching things by actually grabbing them- be as gentle as possible without actually letting them escape, and transfer them into cupped hands immediately. Donāt keep animals squished in your fingers for longer than a few seconds (which is long enough to take a picture, if thatās what your goal is; squish picture included).
3. Leave it in your cupped hands for a bit. At this point, the lizard think you want to eat it. It sounds funny, but these guys are small and their brains are programmed to avoid everything bigger than them. After a bit, open your hands and check on them. Are they trying to escape? If not, open your hands. Let them chill in the sun. Let them get comfortable.
4. Now is a good time to know some body language specific to your species of lizard. The lizard below is not trying to escape, but it is not happy. See the black spot behind its eye? They get them when they are stressed or about to fight. I just left him alone, and the spots disappeared pretty quickly. But had he not turned back green, I would have put him back in the garden. Had he stayed stressed, he likely would have turned darker, and possibly could have dropped his tail. Contrary to popular belief, that is not āno big dealā and it never grows back the same way.
5. After that picture, he pretty much just chilled on me for about half an hour. They will probably start exploring around your hands and arms and maybe even jump between them. This one even seemed to nestle into the small areas of my hands to hide when people walked past. I think he saw me as some slightly warm tree or something instead of a predator. At this point, you can encourage the reptile to stay with you (put your hand out where they are about to walk off your arm), but Iād suggest against forcing them to stay with you. Theyāre their own person! They got places to be! Let them do their reptile thing!
Pretty much the take away from this should be that handling of wild lizards should involve ātouchingā them as little as possible. Let them make the decisions, and just use the opportunity to observe them up close. If theyāre super desperate to escape at any point, let them. There will always be another reptile, itās not worth stressing this one to death. Youād be surprised, some just are fine to chill with you once you show them you wonāt eat them.
Oh, and probably donāt pet them. I donāt really see them enjoying that.
Edit: important note I just thought of! Probably keep these away from little kidsā grabby hands. Like I said, theyāre fragile, and Iāve seen kids love them to death. Look out for your reptile friends.
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