Looks Like a Snake, Moves Like a Snake.........

I have seen yet again, that I am never too old to learn!

On Friday morning I did a load of washing and carried it out into the courtyard to hang it up. The wind wasn't too strong at that stage, so I was able to complete that task without too much struggle. Usually the clothing and I have a bit of a tussle before I peg it into submission, so when I had finished, instead of ducking back into the kitchen and managing to grab the door before it flung itself open and crashed onto the wall, I stood and watched Morris bat an empty snail shell around! It made an interesting tinkling sound, so we were both entertained!

Then I noticed a silvery looking thing on the ground near my feet. At first glance it looked like the tail of a lizard that had been brought in and then abandoned by one of the cats, but when I bent down to have a closer look, I saw that it was too long and thin to be a tail. And there was definitely a head on one end. The other end was a bit chewed. And there were some bite marks in the middle. And it was very dead. Hmm, l thought, this looks very much like a baby snake!

The head is on the left. See the stripes?

By now Morris had noticed it, and so had Kindle, so I called Rob to come and have a look.
Very shiny with stripes along its side, it had a fairly long nose but the eye was small and closed and the mouth was closed too, so I didn't fiddle in case of teeth! But, I was sure it was a baby snake.......and if so......where were mum and dad? And the siblings?

Close up of the head.

We put it on a tissue and took a few photos, Rob with his smart Apple and me with my proper camera! Then we needed some kind of help with identification. I googled a site where I could send a photo and the chap on the other end would get back to me with an answer, and Rob whatsapped his pic to our amazingly brave Tanya Heald who regularly rescues snakes from people's gardens.
And then we waited! We were interested to see if they thought it was the same thing! If not, I was going to decide which answer was less dangerous, and go with that one.

And within a short time, the answers arrived. And they both identified our 'snake' as a 'Cape Legless skink' or 'Acontias meleagris'. I had heard of them but never seen one, so I was fascinated. So, back to google.....

Looks just like our poor thing! (Thanks to Google)

Also known as 'golden sand lizard', they spend most of their time underground where they eat worms and insects. They have a hard pointed nose and a hard-tipped tail that they use as a hook to help them reverse! Because they don't want to get sand and dirt in their eyes, they burrow with their eyes closed, and here is a the clever part, their lower eyelids allow them to detect light when they are burrowing underground.

The female gives birth to three or four live young during late summer. So we may see a couple more.

And the really, really good thing about the legless skinks?

They are totally harmless!