Wherefore Art Thou, Mr. Plestiodon?

As you might have heard, I've had a skink in the house.
No.  Not sTink.  I said sKink. 

A skink.  Black lizard with a bright blue tail.
Yeah, really. 

Southeastern Five-lined Skink or, to call him by his proper name, Plestiodon inexpectatus. 
No, I am not kidding. 

Finding a skink in my bedroom was VERY inexpectatus, so to speak.

See here:  Beware the Plestiodon!
And here:  Conversations With a Plestiodon
Oh and just one more:  Mr. Plestiodon Update 

The day after my most recent Plestiodon post, Daisy the Cat finally clued into the fact that we had an unwelcome guest.  I discovered her lurking excitedly where she had Mr. Pestiodon cornered behind the bedroom door.  Thus, I removed Daisy to the screen porch for a bit so that, hopefully, she would have time to forget finding our lizardy-visitor.  And forget is what she seems to have done--certainly she has been uninterested by anything in the neighborhood of the bedroom door ever since.

Daisy is the most uncat-cat ever.  (She apparently didn't have a cat-mama and was raised by a dog, and that strange accent lingers on because her body language and her behavior are almost entirely canine.)  But she is an unfortunately efficient hunter when it comes to lizards.  I know because I've found the Evidence on the screen porch:  partially dissected and dismembered but uneaten anoles.  This is both sad and yucky.

Did you know, by the way, that hunting-to-feed is "trained activity" in felines?  Any cat will hunt and kill as play but, even if the cat is starving, it will not understand that its prey is food.  A cat will not eat its kill unless it has been trained by its mother or, in rare cases, some other cat.

Anyway, having seen the Lizard Crime Scenes on the porch and having had to clean up when Daisy dragged one "I'm-Not-Dead-Yet!" chameleon into the house, I will tell you that those things contain more juice that you might expect from something reptilian.  Their blood may be cold but, believe me, it's in there.  The reason I mention this unsavory factor is that Mr. Plestiodon, ever since the Incident of the Standoff at the Bedroom Door, has been Officially Missing.

However, there have been no clues of any feline assault, let alone murder.  No blood, no guts, no tiny scaly carcass, nothing to indicate what might have happened to Mr. Plestiodon, although I have looked for him more than a few times.  Since Mr. Plestiodon was most fond of staying in my bedchamber, I would dearly like to know where he has gotten to.  (No sensible Little Old Lady wants to find a reptile of any sort in her bed, take that as you will.)

Frankly, I suspect that my Mr. Plestiodon probably always knew precisely how to get out of the house but he simply chose not to go--certainly he seemed to like to keep up his flirtation with me, and he appeared to appreciate our conversations.  However, his encounter with Daisy was probably just the push he needed to move on to a safer, less-cat-infested, more-lizard-approved locale.

So, thank you, Mr. Plestiodon, for your visit. 
Please don't come again.
And if you do, just stay outside.

Life is good.
.....and it's ever so very much better when skinks remain in the Wild World where they belong!