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• Well I've known about these handsome brutes living in my backyard in Arncliffe since I moved in a dozen years ago and saw something in the garden shed that scared the hell out of me ( mutant rat?) and when I got back into my socks realised was a blue tongue. They range all around and I've found their burrows under my rockery and recently found a young and rather quick blue tongue - a bit bigger than a skink and just as fast. Occasionally I hear adults scuttle away when I approach and saw a beautiful one up close eyeball-to-eyeball as it slithered along the side garden bed - later when I was outside mowing the nature strip I saw it poke its head out at me from under the fence so I admonished it to stay inside. As a gardener I've never used snail pellets for fear they might digest them. I have on occasion found mounds of snail shells where the blue tongues have collected them together in a midden. I feel really blessed to have these remarkable creatures living under my nose. I refer to them as my Garden Guardians. Picking them up though can be messy- in a holiday house I found one in the hallway and on picking it up it evacuated it bowels immediately - quite a defence mechanism believe me!