When All Else Fails, Think Like an Iguana

As a stay at home mom a large percentage of the family's pet care responsibilities ended up on my to-do list.  It didn’t help that we had a menagerie that at one time or another included dogs, parrots, turtles, gerbils, rabbits and well, you get the picture. 

There was one, however, that I just had to draw the line at – the iguana.  Oh, he was cute when we bought him for our son.  Just a few inches long and easy to care for, in fact everyone got a kick out of feeding him and he grew accordingly.  He was gentle with his owner but for some reason when I tried to remove him from the cage to clean it I found myself engaged in a wrestling match.  A 2 1/2 foot Iguana is surprisingly strong.  I knew he was just waiting for his chance to wriggle free and make a run for it, leaving me to blame for his untimely death in the jaws of one of the family dogs.  So I resigned as his part time caretaker and announced to my husband and son that he was their responsibility.

One day as I passed my son’s room I saw the cage door open and no sign of my former wrestling opponent.  I cautiously looked around the room thinking that he was too large to easily conceal himself.  He was nowhere to be found and I was beginning to panic.

I don’t know what always made me think that our bird dog could track any living thing, (blind faith or too many episodes of Lassie), but desperate times call for desperate measures.  I put a leash on him and took him into the room.  He went straight to the empty cage and started sniffing at it; I was excited until he immediately showed the same interest in the garbage can and some dirty socks.  I sent the dog packing and tried to think logically. Where would I go if I was an iguana?  It would have to be somewhere warm; he was a lizard after all. Under the heat lamp in his cage was the warmest spot I could think of and he wasn’t there, so clearly this iguana was illogical. 

Just then my son came home and I frantically tried to explain how I had tried everything to find him.  He just laughed and pulled the bedroom curtain aside.  There he was sunning himself on the windowsill.  I guess there is such a thing as lizard logic.

The Scream

               When my daughter was about six we vacationed in a cabin in the woods of Northern Wisconsin.  I was a single parent at the time so I invited some friends to join me with their two little girls.  We spent the days hiking, fishing and canoeing and the nights in front of the fireplace.

                One day the girls were playing outside at the edge of the woods while we prepared lunch.  My friend’s girls flew through the door the minute we called but just as I turned to look for my daughter there was an ear piercing scream from outside.  All three parents were out the door in seconds.  My daughter was standing near the cabin crying and looking over her shoulder towards the woods.  I hugged her and asked what happened.  She said that there was a big black and white animal in the woods and it growled at her.  We described every animal we could think of that might have been in the area from raccoons to bears to beavers.  She knew what they all looked like and insisted that it wasn’t any of them.  After lunch I talked to my friends and everyone agreed that it must have been a large raccoon.  That night we tried to ease her fears by joking that the she probably scared the raccoon do death with that blood curdling scream.  She laughed with us but as I was putting her to bed she looked at me with desperation and told me firmly that it was not a raccoon.  I couldn’t help but believe her but I didn’t have a clue what she had seen.

When we stopped in a rest area on the way home there was a large map of Wisconsin on the wall with pictures of common trees, flowers and wildlife.  My daughter excitedly told me to look at one of the pictures.  At first I didn’t recognize what it was because I had never seen one in real life.  The picture was of a badger and she confirmed that it was the animal that had growled at her.  We were both relieved and wished our friends could be there to see it.  I was proud of her for standing her ground even when no one seemed to believe her and I never forgot that look in her eyes asking me to stand with her.