Hello, my friends, and welcome to episode 125 of Just the Zoo of Us.

On this week's episode, I got to hang out with reptile keeper and enthusiast Dominique DeFalco,

who joins me to talk about the fabulously lashed, crested gecko.

You're going to hear all about the joys of loving and caring for reptiles, the mind-blowing physics that keeps geckos clinging even to smooth glass, and what makes these wide-eyed, velvety soft lizards such special little friends.

Just the Zoo of Us presents the Crested Gecko with Dominique Defalco.

Music Crested Gecko with your favorite animal review podcast. This is just the zoo of us.

And this week, I'm really excited to bring y'all my friend. This is not a new friend for me,

but it's a new friend for y'all. This is Dominique DeFalco. Say hi, Dominique. Hi, good morning, Ellen.

I'm so excited to talk to you. This is not my first time talking to you. I have joined you on your podcast, Modern Medusa, and that was a really, really fun time. But for listeners to our

podcast, this is their first time hearing your voice. Could you please real quick, give me a quick

introduction to Dominique DeFalco. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks so much for

having me on. This is so exciting for me. For people who don't know me, my name is Dominic DeFalco.

I use she-her pronouns, and I am from the Cincinnati, Ohio area, and I am a reptile enthusiast.

So I work with reptiles. I keep reptiles. And that's kind of like my

hobby in life. And you were on my podcast called the Modern Medusa podcast, which is a podcast to listen to when your

kids aren't in the room. Yeah, it's for the grownups. It's for the grownups. But I highlight women who work with

reptiles or just work in the animal space in general. So it started as a way to just talk about

reptiles, but it's kind of grown in the last year to really cover a wide breadth of animal

enthusiasts who identify as female or non-binary.

Awesome. And it is a really nice podcast. I came on to talk about a historical woman herpetologist.

I talked about Enrique Calabresi, which was a fascinating story. But we also talked about,

you know, loving reptiles and loving animals and podcasting. And so, like, it was a really fun time. So anybody who's listening to this and I was like, oh, that sounds like my kind of thing. Go check out modern Medusa. It is a fun time. So, Dominique, what got you into reptile enthusiasm, like, as a hobby and a lifestyle. What got you into reptiles?

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