So you see skinks in your home, and you’re finding ways to prevent them? Frankly, not everyone is comfortable with having skinks in their home; that is why here’s your 101 guide to skinks.
What’s a skink?
Contents
Skinks are a part of the lizard family with a thick neck and smaller legs than their body. In addition, their body is tightly and smoothly scaled which makes them look shinier when put next to a lizard.
Life cycle
The average life of a skink is approximately 6-20 years. Although, a garden skink lives for 2-3 years generally.
Signs of a skink infestation
If you’re seeing lizard dropping in your home, backyard, garage, or anywhere around, all of them are signs of skinks infestation. Their leave behind shredded skin, particularly transparent and white. The other signs of skinks infestation are dead bugs and lodged eggshells.
Where do skinks live?
You can find skinks under the leaves of the trees, within the grass, or hiding under the rocks. They love living under the caves or the soil because it hides them from large predators.
Are skinks poisonous?
No. Skinks are not poisonous in any respect as they don’t have any venom or toxins in their body. Although, they will bite you if you try to pick them up as it tends to interrupt their skin and tail.
Overall, they are not at all dangerous to humans and don’t cause any harm.
Why do You have Skinks in your house?
This is the foremost common question people wonder about all the time. The answer to this question lies below.
- Insects: Lizards have the potential to stick on the walls and climb heights. They love to feed on insects. Whether they are crawling insects such as spiders, moths, ants, or perhaps butterflies or flying insects such as flies, mosquitoes, or beetles, they love eating them as it is food for them.
- Plants: Most lizards like to eat fruits and vegetables, which may be why the lizards aren’t going away.
- Water: Like us humans, lizards need water for survival, too, as two-thirds of their body is formed of water. Check if you’ve small ponds or contaminated water pots; after using the sink and spilling water, make sure to wipe the area thoroughly, so it becomes dry.
What do skinks eat?
Skinks usually go after ants, mealworms, crickets, grasshopper, flies, moths, beetles, spiders, and other kinds of invertebrates.
They also feed on certain fruits like bananas and strawberries and seeds. They hate citrus fruits.
Skinks do not harm anyone. Although removing them may seem like a tough job, but these tips will help you prevent them easily.
How to Eliminate Skinks in the house Naturally
Don’t worry. Even if the skinks have gotten into your house, there are multiple ways to eliminate them, which works like wonders.
Open the windows
The departure always follows the arrival. So the simplest thing you can do is opening the windows so that the skinks can go outside by themselves.
Naphthalene balls
Keep the naphthalene balls in your kitchen or wherever the skinks are coming. It works as a good pest controller and helps to get rid of them.
Onions
Keep the onion slices near the places where skinks are hiding. The sulfur in onion helps in creating a bad odor which helps in repelling the skinks.
Peacock
Peacocks love to eat lizards, and that’s why lizards fear peacocks. Keeping peacock feathers around your house will help in getting rid of skunks.
Glue traps
This is the most-trusted method to get rid of skunks. Keep them near the light as skinks love being near light. Once they get into the trap, with the help of the cardboard, throw them away.
Remove hiding places
Skinks will find the crevices and cracks to sleep and hide in your house.
They may readily conceal and hide themselves around your home because they’re little reptiles. It is why you could discover them hiding during the day in your basement, attic, garage, or other dark areas.
Outside, they can hide in fence, foundation crevices, crawl spaces, voids, wooden panels, patio furniture, and even within items!
They are the masters of camouflage, and cramming their bodies into a packed place gives them a sense of security.
By getting rid of the potential hiding places, you can control the quantity of the skinks.
This will make your house less attractive to the skinks, and they will be less likely to infest your yard.
The following list are the common skink nesting areas:
- They can conceal themselves in your garage, attic, or basement.
- Between the crags
- Within the tall grass
- Underneath the litter
- The bark of a tree
- Logs
- Cracks in the foundation
- Within crevices and cracks
- Behind a row of potted plants
- In outbuildings, greenhouses, or sheds
- Between storage containers
- On the sills
- On wooden fences, in the spaces between the panels
- Under appliances
- Under Patio furniture
They may easily go under ripped window screening under door gaps, grates, vents, broken weatherstripping, due to their small size.
They will look for a more pleasant ambient temperature inside your home if it’s really hot or cold outside, so they can thermoregulate in your property.
They may also be drawn to the darkness or the numerous hiding places in your home.
When you lift the old box of rubbish, don’t be startled to see a skink scamper out!
How to prevent skinks from getting into your house
Preventing the skinks from getting into your house is always a far better option rather than regretting and searching for methods to prevent them.
Below are a number of the ways that can help you to keep the skinks away.
Cleaning the house regularly
The skinks are not there for capturing your house; they are there for the food. Regular cleaning of the house will ensure that there are no spider webs or cockroaches within the house. If they don’t find any food, they’ll leave the place to find a new home.
Cut the food supply
Just like humans, skinks also need food to survive. They feed on insects and wood. Cleaning the kitchen bins regularly and dumping the garbage from time to time will ensure that there is no hub of insects that can attract skinks and lizards. Also, don’t pile up wooden logs, debris, rocks anywhere around your garden, which will attract them more.
Naphthalene balls
For the clothes, cabinets, and other dry places in your room, use the naphthalene balls. It works as a good pest controller and will help to keep the skinks at bay.
Seal the corners
Keep the doors and windows locked, so they don’t get any doorway to enter your home. Also, make sure there’s no gap in the window from where they can sneak in.
