Caring for Strangers

Commonly seen as either dangerous or unsocial, reptiles represent a kind of alterity that is often deemed categorically different from warm-blooded mammals. In the village of Manapany-les-Bains, however, on the island of La Reunion in the Western Indian Ocean, care for the endangered gecko species Phelsuma inexpectata has taken an unexpected turn: initiated by a local NGO, village residents have declared their private gardens a gecko-friendly zone. Engaging concepts of multispecies care and alterity, this article explores what caring for a reptile means. Based on ethnographic field research in Manapany-les-Bains, I will discuss how the gecko’s otherness remains an ambivalent trope, being both reduced and capitalized on, and that new alliances are exclusionary and fragmented.