I saved a bluetongued lizard yesterday. It was near my cat’s food bowl, and presumably had been eating from it (you’d be surprised at how much native wildlife seeks out cat food… brush turkeys, possums…).

Anyway, I knew I couldn’t leave it there, because not only does my cat eat the food in that bowl but so do at least two other neighbourhood cats (to my own cats’ great dismay) and if any of them came along then they’d inevitably want to have a go at this nice big lizard.

So I picked it up, and held it, which was pretty difficult, as it kept walking speedily away so I was constantly putting one arm in front of the other and yelled for my Mum. About ten arm rotations later she came out, and was surprised to find me holding a 30cm-long lizard. On her advice, I put it on the ground next to a clump of thick thorny bushes where nothing could get in after it, and it slid away into the low dark space beneath the branches. Mum did try to pat it, before I put it down, but it opened its mouth and made a short noise like a rapidly deflating balloon, so she stopped.

It was an Eastern Blue-Tongued Skink, to name the exact species ( although most species of blue-tongued skinks are  commonly known as a ‘blue-tongued lizard’ or simply ‘blue-tongue’ here), which is very similar to the Pink-Tongued Skink except for the tongue colour, and since I know you’re curious, here is a picture of one of the species of Blue Tongued skinks displaying its most distinctive characteristic:

 And, in total irrelevance to the rest of this post, I found an adorable site called PotterPuffs, which, among other things, has seriously cute/funny icons. Check it out.

PotterPuffs are love