Attached are two pictures of my bluey, who I adopted earlier this year. Blueberry is 35 years old! I adopted her from the Wildlife Discovery Center near Chicago IL. I worked at this animal sanctuary after high school, where I got the chance to work with Blueberry, and this year the Discovery Center moved down to Tennessee and Blueberry was too old to go on the journey down south. The founder of the WDC also gave our family our first snake back in 2002, so I have been familiar with him and his family my entire life. I was at the WDC visiting at the right time when I was informed I could adopt her!
Blueberry is so old that her name used to be N'Skink (LOL). The name was changed after she was retired from being a class pet for the wife of the founder of the WDC, as she was a teacher for quite some time. Blueberry is an anomaly in terms of her age. She is in stellar health, however, I adopted her knowing I might only have a month with her, or potentially 15 more years! Every day is a gamble as we never know the quick turns reptiles can take, but I love her as if she were actually my child (despite being 10 years my elder).
I've been following the cleaning, feeding, etc. protocol that the WDC advised me to carry on, however there is so much I don't know about a skink this old! I thought joining this website might help with questions I have in the future. And no, I don't have any papers or information about her birth so I can't enter her in the Guiness Book of World Records.
There is much Blueberry cannot do at her age- she does not like to play outside (though we do sunbathe together), she hardly climbs anything, doesn't eat on a regular schedule (but still poops a TON), and she spends most of every day sleeping under her sun lamp. She has a nasty scar on her rear end as well as missing claws on her front paws as she had a very aggressive tankmate years ago. I've recently discovered she seems to be losing her vision, as it's very hard for her to distinguish her food from the bowl. She bites the bowl a lot. I'm wondering how I can feed her her dog food and greens in a way that she can easily access them, but perhaps that's something for another post.
Like I said, I've never been a skink mommy, nor a mommy to the most geriatric bluey I've ever heard of. We've gotten into a good rhythm and it is clear she is very happy and she loves her mommy a lot (we snuggle and she falls asleep on me). I'm still playing a lot of it by ear, but I'm happy to be a part of the BTS community and am looking forward to the discourse!
