Brumation? Or Vacation?

"My skink is brumating! I miss her a lot – it’s weird to have a pet that just kind of… Checks out for several months on end. Meanwhile, my family have been joking that she must be vacationing elsewhere for the winter, so have a colored sketch of tourist Tillie.

For those curious, here’s what she actually looks like!

She’s pretty over-exposed in this picture, but I hope her lizardy beauty comes through! She’s such a cutie! Has quite the attitude, though… But we love her anyway, huffs and all!"

 - 2018 Brennan

Blue Tongue Skink

"A quick doodle of a caramel bluey I did to pass the time.

I’m so excited for mine to get here, guys."

 - 2018 Brennan


Though she wasn't a caramel T blue tongue, she was a sunset white mix! She's the grouchiest skink to ever live and we love her.

Wild Day

"(This is gonna be fairly autobiographical, so if that’s not your thing, you can just skip this post. But it involves cute animals! Well, ones that I think are cute.)

Today I’ve had probably the coolest day in my life when it comes to animal sightings and occurrences. It started off pretty early in the morning, even! My Dad was driving me, and we were just leaving the neighborhood when:

Wait… Is that….

It is!

IT’S MINI-MORTY! After not seeing him for a month, he pops up again (in camera quality that would make Bigfoot photographers wince). He very politely waited for us to stop before crossing the road in a hurried shuffle and shambling off into the bushes, presumably to find a good spot to sleep for the day. What a cutie!

Moving on: so, for the uninformed, I’m going to be getting a northern blue-tongue skink this year! I’m super excited, since I’ve been researching for over two years now, and I feel up to the challenge of obtaining a brand new scaly friend. (In case you’re at all curious as to what blueys are, imagine a stubby snake with a massive head and tiny little legs that look like they’ve been stuck onto their sausage bodies with glue. Or just Google it, I s’pose.) I’ve been chatting with various breeders for months, and I think I’ve finally found a specific breeder I’ll be buying from, which is sweet! And also super relieving – skinks have been popular pets the last couple years, so they get bought up fast, and they’re pretty hard to come by.

Finally, to close out the day, I was sitting and playing some Skyrim (as I do), when I heard my Dad shout “THERE’S A BAT IN THE BACKYARD!” I booked it over there, and realized that there wasn’t just a bat – there were five of them! I’ve never seen bats this close in action, since they’re pretty uncommon where I live, so seeing one of my all-time favorite animals (ever since I was five!) doing their awesome acrobatics in the air while I got to watch was almost surreal. It was so fantastic! The dog barking kind of ruined it, though. But hey, animals are animals."

 - 2018 Brennan

Beetle Boy

"And the interesting animal sightings around my house continue!

We found this little guy jumping around in our house today! I called my dad over to look a him, we snapped a couple pictures (during which my dad so graciously agreed to having the bug sit on his hand), and let him go. Afterwords, I did some digging on what he might be, and, according to the internet, he was a brown stink bug. Yeesh. As someone with a sensitive nose, I’m glad he was feeling docile today!

It struck me as odd that he’s out and about, since it’s currently pretty cold where I live. We’ve been having some sun the last couple days, so that’s probably what woke him up. Well, I hope wherever he is, he can find a good place to winter over before it gets too cold again. Good luck, little bug dude!"

- 2018 Brennan

Mini-Morty

"Look who came to visit my house last night! There’s an apple tree in the neighboring lot, so we’re betting this little guy dragged some apple-sickles under this tree to eat them safely, since we’ve seen him munching on them before. What a cutie! We’ve dubbed him “Mini-Morty”. I hope he comes back again!

Unrelated, but did anyone see the the lunar eclipse last night? It was pretty cool! It never got extremely red like it sometimes does, but it had a nice russety tone."

 - 2018 Brennan