Upcoming Vacation...need some travel/temporary cage ideas

[kerby]

Hey all, its been awhile...been super busy with the lsat coming up. Anyways I'm taking a trip up north next month and I'll be gone close to a week so I don't feel very comfortable leaving Ozzy at home even with a timer for his light. I need some ideas for a temporary enclosure for up at the cottage. I plan on just bringing my clamp light fixture up, and just switching it to a lower wattage standard light bulb instead of the huge uv flood I'm using now. As for the car ride up, I was just going to keep him on my lap in a small box. So any suggestions on the enclosure would be much apppreciated (heh, keeping in mind of course that I'm a poor, broke college student)

[Lucifer_Spades]

Rubbermaid/Sterilite containers work awesome, are light, and come in many shapes and sizes for cheap cheap cheap.

[Fatal_S]

One week is absolutely nothing for a BTS to be left alone. With the lights and heat on a timer, there is no problem at all. You bluey wouldn't even really notice, nevermind get stressed. Your bluey would be much happier being ignored at home than in and out of a box and living in a new home, especially if he isn't used to it.

If you are set on taking your bluey with you, get him used to it for a while first. Get his new setup ready, and let him explore it daily. Get him used to being in and out of the travel box.

[kerby]

Ah, see I wasn't sure how long they could go, especially without water, I know food wouldn't be a problem. To be honest I really don't want to take him, but the real problem is my mom not believing that he would be fine alone for that long Another issue of course is that we wouldn't be running the air conditioning and I'm worried that the combination of his lamp heat and the temp in the house would get too high for him. But I will defer to the experts on this one, and so I guess my new question would be which would stress him less, the travel or sitting alone in the hot house for a week with no food or water?

[Fatal_S]

Get a themoregulator, one of those machines that constantly takes the temperature and decides if the heat lamp should be on or off. Those are a great investment, gives you peace of mind. However, if you don't bother to feed the skinker for the week before leaving, you could leave the heat off, and it will just pass out for the week you're gone. Getting cold isn't a problem, but too much heat can be very bad.

[SailleSkinklover]

I personally think it depends on the skinker's personality and how you tend to deal with him attention-wise...
A week alone and you might come home to a grumpy huffy animal that has gotten used to not being messed with.
Or you bring him with, pay him some attention, knowing for sure that he's being fed and watered and he adapts to the situation because he really has no choice.
I tend to bring Chuffers with me whenever I can. He spent half our road trip in Oregon (trying to make babies with Mama). He makes the hour trip between my place in Everett and our home in the woods out in Carnation on a regular basis, and he seems fine. Last summer he was babysat at a friends home for a week while we were out of town, and he even rode the Washington State Ferry there and back, no problems.
He's a very well travelled skink, he's got a laid back personality, so he seems to adapt quite well to whatever we "put him through".
But that's just my personal experience.