The Skink Incident

As David Rooks drove us to our forest hike location he told us an incredible story of his last hurricane experience.
While the hurricane roared across Tobago he slept snugly in his secure home which sits on a hill over-looking the sea. At midnight he was abruptly awakened and found himself flying through the air. Unable to grasp the tree branches flying by he did manage to get hold of a wire and pulled himself back to safety.
The wire turned out to be the hydro line to his home; fortunately the power was out. He took refuge with his neighbour and in the morning he could see what had happened. At midnight a tree had smashed through his roof, landed on his bed and catapulted him out through the roof's hole and off the cliff. The abrupt awakening, darkness and hurricane force winds and rain made for a totally shocking experience.
While David was enlightening us with his tale I happened to glance down and saw that I had a 4-5" skink (lizard like creature) on my chest looking back at me. I screamed (more than once, I fear); David who was much more composed than I pulled the vehicle over to the shoulder, reached over and in an instant grabbed the skink and tossed it out the window, all the while telling me that I had to get used to this sort of thing as I'm now in the tropics, and that was that.