We have a guest at Casa del Pino at the moment, a friendly little copper skink. This is the most common flavour found in Auckland, they’re tiny and pretty and solitary. A week or two ago we were cleaning up the yard, getting rid of all the rubbish, weeds, mowing and edging and so on, and I managed to stick a gravel rake right through this little guy, I thought the best thing to do to help him, would be to bring him inside to recuperate away from any predators for a bit.

He seems better than he was, though I’d actually be surprised if his injury doesn’t eventually kill him – one of the tines went right through his abdomen.

I’m under the impression that the law on bringing this guy into the house is pretty unequivocal – you’re not allowed to, but I think it would be immoral to injure an animal and then not help the guy. Claire told me I was being mean bringing him inside, I’m not sure she knows what being mean actually means, I cleaned the wound up, disinfected it, provided him with a safe place to rest (and old fish tank I’ve filled with bark & leaf litter, water and little insecty dinners — I’m assuming he’ll eat slaters, but I’m not certain.

I’m going to put him back in the garden as soon as I feel like he’s a bit better. The whole thing is probably futile, as his hind legs seem to be fairly useless now – they’re not completely paralysed, but he certainly seems to be mostly moving using his front legs.

What can you do? Leave a little harmless guy to die in the garden? He didn’t do anything to me to deserve that.

As you can see, he’s little, didn’t stop him from biting my thumb when I was cleaning around his wound.