A sad story about a lizard

One Sunday when we were coming home from church, we saw a cute, tiny little house gecko on our porch.  In the 12 years I have known him, DMP has NEVER not attempted to catch any lizard, crab, or snake we've encountered. This was no different.

He captured this little guy and I rushed to get my camera so I could show y'all our cute, tiny geckos (whose presence in the house I tolerated during the great roach infestation, but would probably be less happy about them- we'll see if they show up in the house this summer- I'm totally OK with them around the house- they are bug eaters!!).

Just after DMP picked him up, this guy did a tail-thrashing thing (you can see the tail action in the first pic) and then went really, really still (below).  Uhh... He didn't move and so we told the girls that maybe geckos "play dead" as a defense strategy (we thought maybe).  So we set him on a rock on the porch to see if he would "wake up".

He didn't.

***One gecko was harmed in the making of this blog post. Sorry.***