ISLAND CONSERVATION-Fond thoughts of my flatmate |07 May 2007

by Pat Matyot

There is a skink under my bed. Or behind the kitchen door. Or somewhere among the seashells and bits of pumice stone on the table next to the window. I don’t know. He moves around the flat so much. Some mornings while sipping tea and revising my Spanish I suddenly hear something move across the balye zig leaning against the wall next to the fridge. I look up and he is there, slinking furtively down the coconut leaflet midribs, his tail trailing behind for all the world like something he is dragging along. He reaches the floor, pauses, and then disappears under the fridge.

I think sometimes he sleeps in the small kapatya that hangs from the doorknob just above the broom. But I forget to check when I get home late at night. One morning I heard a scratching sound coming from there. There he was, clambering over the rim. I unhooked the kapatya, quickly thrust a large plastic bag over it, and tipped everything over to trap the skink in the bag. This was my chance to put an end to the unsightly droppings strewn all over the floor, on my books and CDs, scattered among my shell specimens, in the shower, and even next to the telephone.

I tied a knot across the mouth of the bag, made breathing holes using a large pin, and left the bag on the doorstep. My plan was to release the skink a long way from the flat before taking the bus to work. Later, when I picked up the bag, he was gone.

He had used his snout to widen one of the pinpricks into a hole large enough for him to squeeze through. The next morning he was scampering across the kitchen floor again. Perhaps it was only my imagination, but I thought there were even more droppings than usual. One of them was stuck to my favourite piece of driftwood, a casuarina root shaped like the head of a dinosaur.

Leftovers

I have tried to shoo him away from the flat. Coming across him skulking next to my shoes I have used my fatak broom to try to chase him away. He usually manoeuvres adroitly around me and across the room to take refuge under the bed, behind or under the foldaway mattress that I keep there for guests. Once or twice I was persistent enough to manage to drive him out to the doorstep and out of the flat. By evening he was back inside.
He feeds on cockroaches, partly at least. I can recognize bits of cockroach anatomy in the droppings. They’re obviously not completely digested. So I gather he’s responsible for the occasional cockroach parts – wings, head, thorax, legs – unwanted leftovers, I suppose, that I find ants swarming over or dragging away.  And that, too, contributes to the mess that makes me want to get rid of him. Or are the cockroach parts the work of the large huntsman spiders (bibouk), my other flatmates, and I’m blaming the skink unjustly here?

But I have no doubt that he is responsible for throwing my shells and crab carapaces to the floor. The bibouk certainly couldn’t do that. On a number of occasions I’ve found bits of sloughed-off skink skin among my cones, cowries and bivalves. I think he must rub himself against them when he is changing his skin, to help him scrape off the old one. A few times I found the cast skin from his tail, virtually intact, the pattern of tiny scales very much in evidence.

Cold-blooded

I suppose he climbs onto the table where the shells are because of the patch of sunlight that lingers there around mid-morning. At other times I’ve found him sunbathing on the windowsill, his other “thermo-regulation site”: being “cold-blooded”, unable to generate enough of his own body heat, he needs to bask in such places to absorb heat from the environment to work up a body temperature that is sufficiently high so that he can be active.
I do not have the heart to disturb my reptilian flatmate at such moments. I sip hot tea, I hear the waves crash on Anse Nord-est beach outside, I observe him sunning himself where a beam of sunlight filters in from the takamaka and bwa torti foliage outside, and I say aloud “El lagarto es un animal hermoso”.
He notices me watching him, or maybe he hears me. He shifts slightly, his brown scales glinting softly in the sunlight that plays over them. He flicks out his tongue – not to taunt me, I know, but to smell me and get a better sense of what I am. That little pink tongue catches scent particles in the air, then pulls back to press them against special sensory cells on the roof of the lizard’s mouth. He gives me a sideways look – was that a blink or a wink? - and keeps on basking, unperturbed. I am the familiar, benevolent human flatmate.

The Island Conservation Society promotes the conservation and restoration of island ecosystems.