Stay low: a skink's escape is a ground game
A blue tongue skink does not climb curtains or sprint for distant rooms. He is a heavy-bodied, short-legged burrower, and an escape for him looks like this: out of the enclosure, a slow patrol along the nearest wall, and then a determined wedge into the first dark, soft, body-shaped place he finds. Most loose skinks are recovered within the same room or the next one, buried so completely that only patience finds them.
Close doors as you clear rooms, and note how the enclosure opened — blue tongues are stronger than they look and can shoulder a loose sliding door or lift a lightweight top at a corner.
Where a blue tongue hides indoors
Search at floor level and search by touch as much as by sight. Work along the baseboards, then under sofas, beds, and dressers, running a flashlight beam slowly because a skink's patterned back in shadow looks exactly like upholstery fabric. Check behind and beneath the refrigerator and washer, where warmth and darkness combine, and then go through the soft piles: laundry baskets, stored blankets, pet beds, and the insides of shoes and bags left on the floor.
Burrowing is the behavior to respect here. A skink in a pile of towels does not sit on top of it; he works himself down into the middle layers and goes still. Lift soft piles piece by piece rather than shaking them out, and check each item before it leaves the room, so a hidden skink is not carried into a washing machine or a closet in another part of the house.
Let his nose lead him home
Blue tongue skinks navigate by scent and tongue-flicking, and a favorite food is a genuine lure. Set a shallow dish at floor level against the wall near the enclosure with a little ripe banana or warm cooked egg — foods whose smell carries — beside a low water dish. Refresh it morning and evening, and note whether it has been disturbed; a skink feeding at the station at dawn will usually settle into the nearest cover afterward, which narrows the next search to a few square feet.
A cardboard box with a skink-sized hole cut at floor level, lined with a familiar-smelling towel and placed beside the food, gives him a burrow substitute he may choose over your furniture. Check it by lifting it gently from above rather than tipping it.
Found him — and escape-proofing the return
A cornered skink hisses, flattens, and flashes that blue tongue, all of it bluff. Slide both hands under his full body — he is heavier than he looks and hates dangling — and carry him low over the floor back to the enclosure. Then refit the setup for a strong, pushing animal: a top that latches rather than rests, doors that cannot be shouldered along their track, and nothing climbable stacked against the glass inside.
If he reached the garden, search under leaf litter, mulch, and low shrubs in widening rings from the door, because he will have buried himself at the first good cover. Should a neighbor unearth him while digging, KinsLe's Lost Pet Alert System lets them message you directly through his profile instead of improvising care for a lizard they do not know.