This thing I saw was different. Specifically, this thing was much bigger. I only saw a flash of its scaly abdomen, but that trunk was about 2-3" in diameter! Enormous!! I ran inside, grabbed The Wildlife of Greater Brisbane and turned to the Lizards chapter. I decided that we had a Blue-tongued skink living in our garden. This was Day 1 of Skink Watch 2009. Every day that I went out to check the mailbox, I kept my eyes peeled for our blue-tongued amigo, but didn't see him again until a couple of weeks ago.
We had some people over for a winter BBQ and for the first time in five months, our skinky little friend showed his slithery head! It's not like this lizard runs around with his blue tongue hanging out. He has to be pestered before he'll flash it. We decided to be good neighbors and just let him be. There's a whole web page dedicated to these animals, so if you want to see the blue tongue, just follow the link. After seeing the photos on that site, I'm kind of glad we didn't pester him.
Can you imagine finding this in your garden? For size comparison:
This picture makes us look like our baby is in imminent danger. Don't worry - the baby wasn't in there and I always shake the pram before I put her in it to wake up any animals sleeping in it. (Oh, and Mr. Blue Tongue eats fruit, flowers, eggs, snails and carrion.)Skink Watch 2009 is over. I'm glad he paused and let me snap a few pictures. Now he's out in our garden somewhere. I hope he plans to stay!
We also discovered that our funny little possum like to take naps in the laundry room.
You can see her disinctive "jelly bean-shaped poop" in the foreground.