About a year ago, my aunt was working at her warehouse in New Jersey opening shipping crates that had just come from California. Inside one of the crates she found a very bold, very aggressive little lizard who must have been looking for a dark place to hide and climbed into the wrong box. She caught him and contacted her brother (my uncle), who had been keeping reptiles on and off since he was young, and he agreed to take the lizard into his care. He was under the impression that it was some kind of skink. Unfortunately, my uncle hasn't been known to take very good care of his animals, and with this little guy it was no different. He was kept in a 10 gallon aquarium on some dried up cypress mulch with no heat and an extremely bright aquarium light. He fed him a diet of only undusted crickets, and after several months his "skink" started taking a bad turn. Not wanting to bother trying to correct his mistakes, he tried finding someone else who would take the lizard from him.

Now rewind a few months and I had just started keeping reptiles. A friend of a friend had reached out for someone to take her ball python that she was no longer able to keep. I've always had a passion for reptiles and was in a position where I could take care of it so I offered to take the snake from her. When I got him I realized pretty quickly that he was in very bad shape, and unfortunately it was too late to help the little guy and he died only 3 days after I got him. I was heartbroken, but I decided that I would order a ball python from a reputable breeder and not make the same mistakes as my first snake's previous owner. Since then I've taken in another rescued ball python and a bearded dragon and have really fallen in love with the hobby. So when word got to me that my uncle had a "blind skink" that he wasn't going to keep any longer, I gladly offered to take it off his hands.

When he dropped the lizard off, I could tell right away that he had been in poor health for awhile. I also started trying to identify the species and figured out pretty quickly that he wasn't a skink at all, but a Southern Alligator Lizard. He was very skinny and had retained eye sheds, keeping his eyes stuck closed. Not only that, but I started to notice him sneezing and realized I had to add a respiratory infection to his list of issues as well. I switched out his bedding for some nice moist cypress mulch and began misting him daily in hopes it would help him remove the retained eye shed. I struggled getting him to eat, and was trying really hard not to get my hopes up because I was convinced he wasn't going to make it, until I realized if I used my finger to open his mouth and put prekilled superworms in his mouth he would eat them. He started getting up to a healthy weight and began shedding, but unfortunately his eyes still wouldn't open and even with the addition of a heat lamp to keep his temps up he didn't seem to be recovering from the RI.

After two months or so, I finally decided it was time for a trip to the vet. I had tossed the idea around for awhile and was hoping that with corrected husbandry and a full belly he would recover on his own, but I finally caved and took him in. They gave him a few rounds of antibiotics, a shot of vitamins, gave me eyedrops for his eyes, and since he was wild caught they took a stool sample and checked him for parasites. Now it's a week later and he's doing great. Both of his eyes have reopened and his RI seems to be gone. I named him Woodhouse, after the butler from the TV show Archer, and he's a happy fourth addition to my little collection.

I just wanted to share his story. It's always sad to see an animal in poor shape, especially one who was happily living in the wild and just happened to find the wrong place to hide, but this has been a very rewarding experience. I've really fallen in love with the species, and anguidae in general. I might attempt a little breeding project in the near future because there are a lot of very cool species in the same family and they're not commonly kept or captive bred for that matter. Here are some pictures of him throughout the healing process.


Here is what he looked like when I first got him.




Here he is days after I got him home. I gave him a basking lamp, I think he appreciated it.





Here is a video showing how I was feeding him.



And here's a picture I took this morning. Looking so much better.