Why are they awesome, you ask?
First, they get to be a decent size. They grow to be about 2 feet long. Like this one:
That means they'll eventually get longer than Matt's dog. Wild!
Second, they are omnivores. Their diet is a little over half plant material, and a little less than half meat. This is different from other popular lizards, like the iguana (an herbivore) and the monitor lizard (a carnivore). You can feed them collard greens, mustard greens, mangos, worms, and mice. Neat!
Third, as you may have guessed, their tongues are blue. And unlike other color-named animals (like the "red-tailed hawk", which is really the "reddish-brownish tailed hawk"), it's a really bright blue:
Fourth, they are generally both pretty laid-back and pretty smart. We are pretty sure that the combination of those two factors makes them awesome.
Anyway, we are really excited about getting a blue-tongued skink! We've been doing our research to find out what they eat, what they look like, how long they live (30 years! Matt says he is fine taking care of a lizard for that long), what we should keep them in, and so on. We'll spend about the next month or so looking for good places to get equipment (heat lamps, substrate, food--although apart from things like superworms we can get most of it at a grocery store for humans, tank, UV lamp, sun rock, hiding places...), and then buy it once I have a car (around the 18th of July). We will hopefully be picking up the lizard around the 31st of July, so that will give us two weeks to buy the tank, set it up, test temperatures and humidity, and fix things if we need to.
We are getting a lizard!
