I'll never forget my sons (in kindergarten and 2nd grade at the time) carrying a bucket to the car when I picked them up from school one day. "Mom, can we have a lizard?" sure I say. They load up in the car, bucket and heavy leather gloves in hand. Now mind you, I always played with lizards, snakes, frogs and other "creepy" things when I was a kid, so I'm thinking "whats with the gloves?"
We get home, go into the house and I look at the lizard. WHOOLY CRAP! It's a HUGE SKINK, I mean, it's like 12+ inches long, a good 2+ inches wide and looks mean, now I know what the gloves are for!!!!!! Ok, this thing is NOT going to stay in MY house, uh uh, now way. So off to the pet store, well they don't want it, it's to big. So back home to figure out what to do with this thing. So while I'm trying to place this gela monster into a new home (rescue or?) I hear screaming coming from the kids room. I run in and my 5 year old is twirling in circles with the skink firmly chomped onto two of his fingers and I mean, all the way up to his hand. Of course he was wearing the glove, on the other hand (his brother was using the other one, at least they were sharing!). He was spinning and waving his hand so much it finally let go and flew right out the window. Appearantly the skink jumped up onto the side, trying to get out and jumped onto his hand ( guess little hands look like food!). So of course we had to take a trip to the ER, cause those suckers have BIG, SHARP teeth and they did a number on the little guy. Needless to say, now when my kids want to bring something home, I look at it first
Oh, I forgot to say, YES it's a skink and they bite!!!!!