After moving to Florida, in 1987, my husband and I were always looking for ways to make some pocket change. My husband was a snake hunter, which provided one way, but being adventurous the idea for hunting skinks came to light. My husband knew of an area along Route 27 south, where there were lots of pieces of boards, and tin, and old tires laying along the road, a perfect hiding place for ground and red-headed skinks.
We spoke to a reptile buyer from Ft Lauderdale, that offered 25 cents each for them. This was going to be easy. We took some boxes with us and started looking and the place was over-run with skinks. We filled the boxes we had and even put some in pillowcases, we were going to be rich.
The next day we opened the boxes to count the skinks and beheld a terrible sight. The skinks had fought with each other. Some were dead, while others had no tails. We had about 30 good ones left, not enough worth trying to sell. We took them all back and dumped them where we found them, so they could grow back their tails and live happily ever after.
|