So Lizzy is probably the most common lizard in Australia. He is an Eastern Blue tongue skink, and he's rude and obnoxious. He's also super cute, has a big personality and is all in all pretty awesome.
Dinner on my head?
Lizzy is a result of our friends 2 lizards managing to spend some time together whilst out of their tanks one day and she ended up with 3 or 4 baby blue tongues. Lydia took one of them in and ever since he has lived with us.
Lizzy is nearing 3 years old and could grow to be up to 60cm long.
Baby Lizzy is cute
Lizzy's favourite meal is snails, regular old garden snails. So long as you know they haven't been poisoned then they should be fine to feed to your lizard. We actually keep a few in a tank and breed them. Insects for reptile food are stupid expensive sometimes. Aside from snails he also eats mealworms, crickets, pellets, vegetables and fruit, and even sometimes baby mice. Today for a treat I gave him a warmed up pinky mouse and he swallowed it whole in less than 20 seconds.
When he gets bored he likes to climb around the sides of the tank, particularly the perspex doors. He's managed to escape more than once but it isn't really a problem as he just meanders about the house exploring, when he gets tired he usually finds a nice bed and puts himself to sleep. To find him you just have to stay quiet and wait for the rustling sounds of him pushing shit around.
i said earlier he was rude and obnoxious, not necessarily to us but when we tried to introduce him to our other lizards he just stood all over them and walked on their faces, Lizzy tries to do what he wants when he wants and if you try and stop him he hisses and sooks.
Lizzy with Stumpy his distant relative
It's a surprising amount of personality for what most people think are pretty boring animals. Eat, sleep, repeat. But they genuinely do enjoy exploring and love to wander the garden, hunt for their food and just fuck about in the grass or the dirt.
We try and get him outside at least twice a week for a day and often let him explore the house. I also custom build all our reptile tanks and I usually make them far oversized compared to most people, I prefer to give my animals extra space to what they "need". Lizzys current tank is 1.5mx450mmx450mm and at his current rate of growth I will probably build him a new one in the next year.
Blue tongues don't require a licence but do require specialist care, a UVB light, temperature control and humidity are all important to the health and wellbeing of your skink.
Hope you enjoy Lizzy.
