Thursday, September 02, 2010

Protecting Mom from a skink

Mom's been home sick this whole week, so we've been tasked with monitoring her and making sure she gets enough rest. We've also had to protect her, apparently. On Tuesday Mom was feeling a little bit better and while she was in the kitchen she let us in the garage for some playtime. While we were out there we found a lizard. More specifically, we found a skink. If you're not too familiar with skinks, I think it's what you get when a lizard and a snake have a baby.

Here's what happened:

Mom opened the door from the house to the garage (with the big outside garage door shut). As soon as we get out there she hears all kinds of ruckus. She looks, and Huggy Bear has the skink in his mouth and is running toward the door to show Mom. Mom, less excited than Huggy Bear, quickly shuts the door -- locking us IN THE GARAGE! Well, the door to the garage has a big peep hole, so Mom is watching us play with the skink while she calls Dad to tell him he has to come home and remove the skink from the garage so we can come back in.

In the meantime, we're still playing with the skink. There is a drop cloth on the garage floor from a project Mom and Dad are working on. Well, the skink got under the drop cloth. But that didn't stop us from playing with him. Mom looked out and saw me and HB and Josie on the drop cloth. (Maggie was off doing her own thing.) After a while Mom checked on us and we all looked bored so she opened the door and Huggy Bear came in (no lizard). Then Maggie followed, hoping for some treats. I came in next -- Mom was being very careful to bring us in one at a time in case we tried to sneak the lizard in to play with later. Josie had to be coaxed in because she was determined to make sure that skink didn't try anything tricky. But finally Josie came in too.

Since we came in without the skink Dad didn't have to come home at lunch. So when Dad got home that evening he checked the garage. Apparently we broke our skink. He found a tail bit by the steps and a broken skink under the drop cloth. He has pictures but hasn't uploaded them. The skink was silvery-blue with stripes, probably six or seven inches long -- nothing Mom ever wants in the house again. (Again, because of this incident in 2008.)

I guess the lesson here is, if you have a lizard or a skink to play with, check with Mom forst before inviting her to play -- especially if she's not feeling good. And be careful with your skink/lizard because if you break it they aren't nearly as fun to play with. On the other hand -- once you break your lizard you will get all kinds of treats from Mom.

9 comments:

Gemini and Ichiro said...

I hate it when toys get broken like that

The Meezers or Billy said...

we want a skink!!!

Summer at sparklecat.com said...

My human is sad because the skink broke! She loves lizards and saved one from me once. She is maddening like that.

The Creek Cats said...

Hope your mom is feeling better!

When Ferris gets to go out on the catio, he always brings a lizard in. Mom is usually too late to rescue it from being broken.

Zippy, Sadie, Speedy and M'Gee said...

Dem skinks sound like fun! Zippy brings in live mouses to try to teach mom how to hunt but she's not real good at it...yet. Sheesh, if something happened to us mom would hafta either starve or keep going to da "already hunted" place fur food.

Shaggy and Scout said...

Eewww....snakes & lizards can do that?

What a great adventure! We can just imagine Huggy with the prize skink in his mouth trotting for the door!!
It also must have been fun playing Skink Under the Dropcloth!

Too bad he didn't stay alive so dad could let him go free, but that's the way it goes.

Sweet Purrfections said...

You always seem to have fun critters to play with in your house that scare your mom.

Daisy said...

How exciting! I do not know about skinks, but lizards get broken very easily. Their tails must be built poorly. Harley catches lizards and swallows them in one gulp! Our vet told us this is bad because we can get liver flukes from eating lizards!

Teri and her Stylish Adventure Cats said...

We just have catnip skinks around our house...or maybe they are geckos?