WANNA IGUANA?

One category I never miss reading is "Pets". The standard offerings are puppies, by breed or parental indiscretion; free kittens several weeks old; and iguanas! Most often these are offered for "Free to good home, includes cage (meaning at glass tank) and accessories". Often the size of the creature is given, for example 3 or 4 feet. (FOUR FEET?) Why do people have iguanas as pets and why do they want to give them up?

I learned both sides of this question personally when I became the "foster guardian" of "LeStat", an adult green iguana. "Iggy", as I chose to call him, belonged to a young man who was in the process of moving to a new apartment. Until the move was completed, Iggy needed a place to reside and softhearted Mom had a spare bedroom in which to house him. So Iggy was moved in, tank and all, complete with his special lights and gauges and feeding dishes. I was left with a bag of vegetable chunks which were his food, to be cut up and fed to him daily. The chunks looked awfully large to fit in the lizard's mouth, unless like a snake the jaw unhinged to admit large prey. I was concerned for the creature's welfare. I did not seek his presence, but any creature living in my home under my care deserved proper treatment. So I needed to know how to care for "exotics", as they are called in pet shops. First stop: the Internet.

I learned that iguanas are imported from their natural home in the tropical rain forests of Central and South America, where the climate is WARM and WET. This meant that the environment I supplied had to be much warmer than I kept the house temperature, and more moist. The moisture part could be simulated by "misting" Iggy with a spray water bottle. The temperature was controlled by keeping the door to that room closed and the heat lamp burning during the day. Iguanas, it seems, need the benefits of sunlight, real or artificial, to digest their food. And after they eat they need to "bask" on warm rocks or limbs to complete the process. At night another light must be turned on to maintain optimum healthy conditions. So in addition to scooping the cats' litter pans twice daily, I added the chore of turning off and on Iggy's lighting system.

The Internet directions for preparing his food specified "steel knife cutting into small pieces" of mainly vegetables. If I had fruit on hand, I added a few bites of that, too. I loaded up his food plate nightly and each morning when I went in to change his lamp settings, the food was gone! And although I never expected a lizard to interact with me, like a dog or cat, somehow it seemed to be glaring at me to indicate that the food was gone and the water trough EMPTY. I never picked Iggy up or took him out of the tank, but when I tried to touch him, he pulled away and swung his long, powerful tail back and forth, as if to say "don't touch me!" So I didn't.

All this causes me to wonder why people would choose iguanas as "pets". Certainly they are exotic looking creatures, capturing the attention of all who come by. But they command the same attention span as a "coffee table book" - a big impressive volume full of pictures that, past the casual glance and rifling of pages, just sits there. But books don't have to be fed, watered, have special lighting, need places to bask, or have their tanks changed for cleanliness. Books don't grow larger, as iguanas do, up to the size of their tanks (don't you wish people would automatically stop getting larger when we reached the limits of our clothes?). Iguanas let out to explore the house, I'm told, climb up on curtains which they perceive as trees in their native jungles. Great. Then my cats would have something else to blame for the claw marks!