My Gecko Died – A Grief Diary

In my five years of keeping reptiles, I have unfortunately had two of my reptiles pass away.

I am writing this now on the night (2/10/2025) that I found my Chinese cave gecko, Gimli, dead in his enclosure. This may seem like something that I am writing far too soon after the fact, but as I said earlier, I have dealt with this before and writing has always been a helpful form of processing for me. It is a very terrible feeling, losing a pet. I am sure everyone reading this has experienced some kind of pet loss, whether it was expected or not.

My first loss of one of my reptiles was in September of 2023 and she was my three year old leopard gecko, Freya. If you’re a reptile keeper reading this, you would know that three years is a very short lifespan for this species (or really most reptile species), so I was very shocked at her untimely end. I had taken her to the vet about a month before this, having her treated for some kind of infection in her intestines which was causing her to lose weight, refuse any food, and becoming impacted from not defecating. She also needed a calcium treatment due to an improper amount of UV being given, more than likely because her UVB bulb needed replaced sooner than I had planned and I did not have a UV sensor of any kind at the time (I do now). Her recovery was fairly simple and she was gaining weight back, appeared to be more active again, and her levels of calcium were on the up and up. She had a great appetite and was even taking roaches from the tongs from me, which she hadn’t been doing for months prior. She was finished with her rounds of medicines prescribed by the vet, was pooping again, and overall seemed like she was doing much better.

Then when I was making my feeding rounds one night, I found Freya laying in the front of her enclosure. I took Freya’s death particularly hard because I had done quite literally everything that I knew to do and she appeared to be improving over the timeframe between her vet visits and her death. I remember feeling this intense feeling of guilt, as if I had done something wrong to have caused her death. The guilt that while she was dying in her enclosure, I was off enjoying a dinner on the couch while watching one of my favorite TV shows. I sat on the floor, staring at her in her enclosure and thinking all of these terrible thoughts that were rooted in myself apparently not doing enough for my little gecko. These thoughts went back and forth from: “I did everything I could for her and I was a great home for her” to “I should have been with her 24/7 to make sure that she was doing alright; I did not do enough and I caused this“. She was supposed to live at least seven more years with me, maybe even seventeen more years.

I find myself sitting here now, in a worse thought process over Gimli.

I am trying to find the part of myself that knows that I did everything to give him the best life that I possibly could have, but at the moment I only feel the part that feels guilt and blame.

I also feel an overwhelming feeling of anger for the situation that Gimli was put in from the beginning. His story began in October of 2023, where he was bred and sold by a reptile breeder who was clearly only in it for the money, selling a gecko that was a week and one day old. Myself, an excited reptile keeper who was very much looking forward to keep this incredibly interesting and captivating species, did not pay attention to the many red flags that I should have seen. I will talk about those red flags on a later date, but just know that this was not a breeder who should have been allowed at the expo and I should not have purchased from him.

But I did. I took him home and a very short month later, I had to take him to the emergency vet due to some not fantastic symptoms that I was seeing. I remember posting on my Instagram stories to my followers that I was really kicking myself for being impulsive and purchasing him despite the signs that I should not have been oblivious to. I did not come to the vet office with high hopes and the vet basically ended up telling me that I was right to feel that way. They assist fed him and tried to increase his hydration levels, then came back to tell me that Gimli had a 50/50 chance of survival past the day. I decided to give him his best chance, leaving him there at the vet with the emergency staff overnight. He ended up doing very well there, looking a little more hydrated and less skinny than he was when I dropped him off the previous day.

He proceeded to do pretty well from then on, until I would guess this week. Reptiles are notorious for being able to hide these symptoms and die without a blink of an eye from their owners, sometimes. I think that is what happened here.

I know this and I am not a veterinary professional, but I still wonder, why couldn’t I have seen him yesterday and observed the signs and potentially kept him from dying? I am taking this death harder than the first, although the first came with hours of tears and this one did not. I think the whole “failure to thrive” thing has always been in the back of my mind, alongside the blame on myself for not seeing the beginning signs at the reptile expo. The death of Gimli feels numbing and anxiety-inducing for me, especially in combination of Freya’s death experience. In addition to the feeling of myself somehow causing the death of my geckos (that logically isn’t necessarily correct), I have the anxious thoughts that this is going to happen again.

I don’t think this would be a good blog post if I continued to blab about my numerous and confusing thoughts and feelings about this situation, but I did think it might be helpful to 1) get it all out in the open and out of my head, and 2) out here specifically, to other reptile keepers who may be feeling the same terrible feelings. Despite how very real my feelings are right now, I can say with absolute certainty that the reason we all feel these strong feelings of guilt, blame, and anger, are because we care so deeply about these animals.

Transparency is something that I value more than anything and it is a value that I have always wanted to have from the very beginning of my presence on the internet, so that is why this is now here on my blog. I am experiencing this grief of Gimli and I wanted you all to know that it is normal to feel this way. Also, never let anyone tell you that “it’s just a lizard“, because they have no idea how large a space these little scaley guys hold in our hearts.

Gimli 9/20/2023-2/10/2025