Skink in the Garden

 

Shimmering scales,

Black in Spring,  

Yet, containing the Sun within...

It is another weekend in lockdown. Though Spring has arrived with its winds of warmth and breaths of benevolence, there is little scope to go out and revel in the new-found verdancy of the world. On a Saturday morning that is just beginning to thaw as the groggy sun gets up, I therefore gratify myself with a walk in my backyard. A warm cup of cardamom tea, a chair in the sun and the blue skies definitely begin to look bluer still.

Something seems to scramble in the rocky agapanthus flower beds. I look closely and realise it is a fence skink.  It goes into hiding immediately. Any other day, I would have given a cringe - by nature, we seem to detest lizard-like creatures. Maybe chameleons, especially the green horned ones can qualify as cute (such as the cover image, taken in Ovalekar Wadi in the outskirts of Mumbai - I had gone there to watch butterflies, didn't find much but was delighted to see this emerald beauty, which perhaps had gobbled up the lepidopteras). Nonetheless, the house lizards I grew up with in my house in Calcutta, definitely cannot be passed off as dainty darlings! I recollect a friend who ended up with a lifelong herpetophobia when one day, as a kid, he tried to switch on a light multiple times, in vain, only to realise that it was a big ugly lizard’s head, sprawled on the switch that he was bobbing all the time. Even today, if you utter the L-word, he will shriek in agony, such was the mental scar! All you need to do, to scare him is talk about Gila monsters and Komodo dragons.

The skink comes out slowly from its hideout - it too needs the sun to get out of its torpor. Being cold-blooded creatures, skinks and others in the lizard family need external warmth to start the motors in their bodies. It is therefore a common sight to see these creatures basking in the morning sun to start their day. I have seen many a skink, water-dragon and blue tongued lizard, up close at morn. I even remember in the jungles of Mudumalai, it was on one such early morning, that I saw dracos on a coconut tree. But so bereft were they of energy that it was not difficult to catch them (as did our caretaker that day). 

Draco at the Bear Mountain Jungle Resort, Mudumalai

I look at the skink again - it does look beautiful with its sleek body, shimmering black scales and a white brush-stroke running delectably from eye to tail. It too needs the spring sun to usher in a new day. It too is solitary with perhaps little need or want to go out anywhere.  Perhaps then, our prospects and outlooks are not very different. That small form of life sparks a big change in my mindset and the backyard doesn’t feel like an empty space anymore. I now notice the pink azaleas and the yellow dandelion and mustard flowers that bloomed last night, I see the dewdrops on the grass shimmering like diamonds in the swansong morning sun, and I hear the collared doves cooing softly with melancholy on someone’s roof. 

Skink at the Royal Botanical Garden, Mt Tomah

Covid, lockdown, weekend or not, the natural world continues to run. If you can take a slice of that bounty, sip it with cardamom tea,  and be happy, As the saying goes, when life gives you a lemon, make a lemonade. And if your garden gives you a skink, watch its spangled scales reflect the sun and brighten your day!

11th September, 2021

(All photos: Author's archives)