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I used to work at a Petco long long time ago. The "reptile specialist" that worked there took in a guy's iguana. She told me that it was a very expensive and rare "pygmy iguana" worth over $400,000. You can imagine the difficulty I had not laughing in her face.

Anyway, we all expected this to be a glorious relationship, "reptile specialist" and homeless iguana. After all, this girl had been complaining for months about wanting an iguana SO BAD and how she had everything ready for one and just needed to find one.

It really DID surprise me when she told me about how her cats got into the iguana tank and cut the poor thing up pretty badly. So she put the whole cage outside on the porch. In Washington State, in March. She actually told me "At least she can get some UV out there! I can't afford a bulb!"

So I asked if we could take her, and she agreed. She brought her to the store the next day and we stopped by to get her. She left the poor iguana in her truck's cabin all morning.

We didn't even make it out of the parking lot before we decided on going to the emergency vet. This poor little lizard, barely 3 feet long and 10 years old, couldn't grip with her swollen feet, couldn't see with her swollen shut eye and could hardly breathe through the pus in her mouth.

The emergency vet worked with us and stabilized poor Frankenstein after an overnight stay. She had stomatitis, septicimia, metabolic bone disease, a fractured arm, a badly infected eye, and an absolutely shattered nose. We had to clean her mouth twice a day and give her injections every third day for nearly six months.

Towards the end of her treatment, we woke up one morning to find that her nose had fallen off. She was eating her breakfast and seemed to be fine with it, you could see her nasal bones and she could stick her tongue out without opening her mouth. It was awful! But there was no blood and after another vet visit we decided that the dead tissue had finally just come off.

After that, her nose has kind of mushed over and became this bulbous formation of flesh. Looked like a hideous malformation, not a nose. The last foot of her tail ended up falling off about a year ago, and imagine our surprise when this geriatric old iguana actually REGREW it!

I was tending to my parrots tonight, getting them ready for bed and noticed something amiss in the iguana cage out of the corner of my eye. Frankenstein didn't look quite right. I couldn't even look at her, I had to call my fiance in to do my dirty work, but sure enough, Frankenstein had passed at just a little over 15 years old.

I'm pretty heartsick over this one. When Frankenstein wasn't busy being sick, she was very happy sitting on a shoulder, or taking a bath. She enjoyed watermelon and once destroyed one of the fiance's parents' fancy wine tasting parties scrambling across the entire dining room table to get to a bowl of watermelon after his parents kept nagging us to "Go get your big lizard, show off your big lizard!!". We still laugh about that, spindly legs flailing like windmills down the table, sending caviar and little baguette slices flying.

She would even just sit perfectly calm and still while you trimmed her nails. I'm pretty convinced she was just happy to have a nice warm home with a big mercury vapor bulb and all kinds of salads and greens and squashes to eat.

She couldn't see at all, we think. You could put food into her cage and she'd spend 15 minutes trying to eat the glass while you tried to guide her over to her food bowl. Which was always in the same spot, no less. But when she finally got to her dinner, she'd go ape on it. Never seen a creature with a heartier appetite.

RIP Frankenstein, you were ugly and abused, but sweet and loved. You'll definitely be missed. I don't think I can ever have another iguana, they'll never live up to her legacy.

My aim name is Cadaverpuff
My msn name is Cadaverpuff@hotmail.com