Skink

A story about a skink was mentioned recently by a commenter and I promised I would tell the story. Sort of a closer to nature than some people want to be issue.....

Skinks, for those of you who don't know, are a variety of lizard. More info on them can be found here.

Just over a month ago, before tropical Storm Danny made people think there actually might be water in the sky that falls down to earth some times, I was out watering a couple of trees in my back yard. I normally don't do this ecept for the fruit trees but on of these two trees had just had half it's leaves die and fall off so I figured some agua was in order. As I stood there watching the water run out onto the ground and spread around I heard a rustling noise and saw a large skink come over and start drinking. I watched him for a few minutes then I moved. When I moved he realized there was something up in the air above him and he ran for cover. Where he ended up running though was up the back of my leg. He took up station at about my belt in the middle of my back and sat there. If I craned my head one way he would move the other way. I really thought this was quite funny and wished that there was someone around who could take a picture of this guys hiding from me on my own back. Unfortunately there wasn't and I eventually did a little hop/jump thing that got him to jump off and run into the bushes to hide again.

The picture at the top is not the skink in question but could well be a relative. He lives in the front yard and the back climber lives in the back yard. Back Climber is also substantially larger.