Won’t Stop Trying to Escape at Night

[Plvols]

My Blue Tongue Skink won’t stop trying to escape at midnight to morning waking me up every single night for the last week. I have him on coconut husk bedding and there is a styrofoam background that is making such excruciatingly noise (Its making more noise than my African fat tailed gecko who is nocturnal, who doesn’t make a sound at night). He just turned a year old this week, and not until this past two weeks has he started attempting to escape. He occasionally sleeps during the day and makes noise all night long or just stays awake the entire day and still, when he should be tired and sleeping, he tries to escape. The temperature and humidity in his cage are all right, I have three homes he loves spread around his cage, and the tank is big if not just a little bigger than what he should have for his age. I am so confused why he just now started to try to escape, I think the repetitive behavior started when he tried to escape through a hole in his cage for his fog machine (its now sealed) and succeeded. I had an adult blue tongue skink for a while one time and he would just stand on his log and try to get his tiny hands to reach the ceiling only doing this once or twice a day, during the day and not making much noise. My younger one stands ontop of a home and try to climb the glass wall, dig at the glass corners, climb the styrofoam wall, run around on the crunchy ground, and (if he succeeded on getting up) he climbs on the ceiling momentarily before falling back down. The only thing thags different in the past couple of weeks is that I’ve had more time so I’ve been holding him a lot more for a long time (which has stopped ever since he started making all that noise in an attempt for him to stop), and that I gave him a lot more hornworms (his favorite treat) during this spanse of time. I don’t know if he is wants me to hold him more, or he wants more hornworms, or he just wants to explore the floor of my room. If someone has gone through this or might have a clue on what its being caused by I would greatly appreciate the help. Thank you.

[splashy07]

Do you have any kind of light source on his cage at night? They should sleep if in darkness...and I'd remove the Styrofoam background from the cage, those backgrounds are not made for anything with nails, claws, etc. Great for frogs and geckos. Pieces of Styrofoam can get dislodged and end up in food or water and consumed unintentionally. Do you know if you have a male? Males are quite restless when in season, but really should sleep through the night. How about a picture of your setup? He's obviously not happy about something.

[Plvols]

No, I don’t ever have the lights on at night. Thank you, I had no idea! I took it out and thankfully it just had little holes from him trying to escape. Yes, he is a male, although I thought their breeding season was in February. I believe he was 6 months old then, so maybe he wasn’t mature enough then so could he be in the mood now?
Here is the picture, the set up is a little off (I’m planning to move him into a zoo med low boy very soon and decorate it a lot better) because I moved all the items that were against the corners to the center and took out some plants all last night to see if that would get him to stop climbing. Another thing is (as you can see in the picture) he will just lie there in the right corner whenever I’m in my room for a while and he won’t move for the rest of the day. Is this him saying he wants to play? Or come out with me? I know skinks are pretty intelligent, so is this his way of getting my attention?

[splashy07]

I can't tell from picture what type of skink he is, so wouldn't know breeding season. If he is a northern, yes, Feb-March here in the states, but males sometimes become restless and start dropping sperm plugs at under a year. A few of mine started at six months. I would put in bigger hides and at the opposite corners of the cage. And there is no possible was to know what they are thinking, but I'm thinking he needs bigger hides. They need to feel secure when sleeping, and this could be the problem.