Here at my cabin I see juvenile Skinks with their brilliant blue tails quite frequently. Those tails are “detachable,” and if attacked by a predator the skink can release its tail, which will continue to wiggle, distracting that predator while the Skink vanishes from the scene. A new tail will regrow, taking perhaps 6 months, and will not be as long or as perfectly shaped as the original tail.

It was a bit more than a year ago when I saw my first adult Broad-headed Skink (Plestiodon laticeps). Yesterday my granddaughter spotted a pair of these same creatures. They’ve outgrown the coloring of their bright blue tails, outgrown the obvious stripes and grown to be 12 or 13 inches long, the largest Skink in its native range of the southeastern United States.

Perhaps the reason I seldom see adult Skinks is that they spend most of their lives in the tops of trees, coming to the ground to mate and build nests for egg-laying. They are predators of insects, other invertebrates, and some vertebrates, including rodents and other lizards.