Sneaky Skink

As promised, we are taking some time off from schoolwork this week. Well, the little kids are, at least. The bigger girls are bound by their semester schedules (and will get a lovely vacation in a couple of weeks) and I am hoping to use this time to get some good writing done (though...I'm excellent at postponing things). 

So, this morning the kids—still all in their pyjamas—were downstairs playing in the basement, when suddenly Alexander let out a blood-curdling scream.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

"What's going on?" I called down the stairs. 

Alexander ran up the stairs and, melodramatically gasping for breath, explained, "There...was....a...lizard....in....my...pants! 

"There was a...lizard...in your..." I began repeating, but Alexander cut me off, still panting.

"Pants! Yes! I felt something cold and wet on my legs and thought maybe I was peeing my pants or something…and then a lizard plopped out!"

"...of your pants?"

"Yes! Come and see!" he said, and then ran to the Tupperware drawer. "I need to find a container!"

"This isn't some sort of prank, is it?" I asked.

It is, after all, April Fool's Day.

"No!" he insisted. "A lizard was really in my pants. It's just a skink, we think. Why can't I find a lunch meat container? I can only find good Tupperware! Oh! Here's one!"

We have rules about what the kids can use good Tupperware for: food. If they want to collect bugs or worms or lizards, or if they want to fill a container with water to rinse paint brushes or whatever they're supposed to use a reusable but more disposable container—like an old sour cream container or a lunch meat container. So, ten points to Gryffindor since Alexander remembered the rules!

There was quite a lot of screaming and yelling (and furniture moving) while we chased that skink around the basement, but eventually we got it cornered and Benjamin coaxed it into the container.

Here's Alexander with his sneaky skink:

We figure the skink was just lurking in the basement somewhere (our basement frequently harbours mystery frogs and lizards and even bumble bees...because our basement is special, that's why) and it must have just...crawled up Alexander's pant leg while he was sitting there playing so nicely (they're busy building stuff out of blocks and things down there). And then when he shifted...his little friend made contact with his skin...and freaked him out.

As my friend Amy Gray (who gave us Waffles) said, "It's so funny to me that he was so engrossed in what he was doing that he didn't notice that he was not alone in his pants!" 

Here are Zoë and Phoebe admiring our sneaky skink before we took it outside to set it free:

Benjamin released it by a rotting stump, where we've found five-lined skinks before so assumed this skink would be somewhat safe there.