Would anyone like to tell me about their Leopard Gecko?

[WrigglingAndJiggling]

Obviously mentioning what fantastic pets they make (for dh's benefit) .

They sound to be one of the easier lizards to keep. Do they enjoy coming out of their tank to wander aound, or do they get easily stressed?

Our Leopard Gecko is very easy to keep. We feed him on mealworms which he loves. We just use kitchen roll on the bottom of his viv , it is easy to clean him out. If you use the sand for the bottom of the viv, they can sometimes ingest some which doesn't do them much good. He has a pot with damp moss in which he goes in to shed his skin.
He does come out of his viv and sits on us, however he can be very quick and try to run off sometimes.

Do they actually like attention or do they prefer to be left alone? Would he be sad if I didn't take him out of his tank or would he be annoyed with me for interupting his peace and quiet?

Ours does like some attention but also quite likes to be left alone to sleep. He will come out and run around for a while but not for very long . They need to be kept at a certain temperature as well so you would need a heat mat in the bottom of the viv.

I haven't kept leopard geckos, but have kept lizards over a 10 year period of time. Water Dragons, Green Iguanas and Desert Iguanas.

I do know leopard geckos are much easier, but people do often keep them wrongly. Sad is a real no no as substrate.

I now keep snakes and they are SO much easier than lizards. No escaped crickets around my house, no hassle getting good quality live food or 'gut loading' it, no having to feed every day or huge electricity bills.

Leopard gecko's are the ideal starter lizard (have kept and bred them since 1994) but I agree with midori1999 - they are not as easy as snakes.

The escaped crickets thing is a real issue (they can be bloody noisy and usually go behind the fridge and won't come out - us having hunting obsessed cats is v.useful in these situations!)

You can avoid the risk of the crickets getting out by feeding the gecko mealworms, as WizzleWoo has mentioned, but mealworms are actually a pretty poor foodstuff...not particularly nutritious (can be offset with good gut-loading and dusting of supplements) and also, unless you take the trouble to sort and only feed them very recently molted mealworms (which you can tell because they're much paler than the others) their hard, chitinous exoskeleton is well known for causing potentially fatal gastro-intestinal impaction.

A variety of livefoods is always preferable to any over-reliance on one type, so that they (a) have a more balanced diet and (b) are not fussy eaters, if you encounter a shortage of your usual livefood choice.

Some leopard geckos can be tame and give the distinct impression of enjoying being handled, but others, even with regular handling from day one will never get beyond the point of begrudgingly tolerating you picking them up, LOL!