Cute, Isn't He?

Who is this beast that I live with? I share my food, my bed, and my home with this guy, yet do I really know him? I'm telling you, sometimes Chandler can do some strange things. Last Wednesday while going walkies, Chandler and I were passing by the same iguana carcass that had been laying out on the street for two weeks. It was squashed flat almost appearing to be part of the pavement, and had left a greasy smear in the shape of the lizard oozing out from it's body. In the blink of an eye, Chandler, who had been coveting the stinking mess for these two weeks, scooped it up. As soon as he realized that I was going to try to grab it out of his mouth, he began gnawing on it and tried swallowing the thing as fast as possible. I wrestled with him for a while in the middle of the street, pulling and yanking on the filthy treat, while cars made their way around us in a wide arc. Finally, with one great tug, I managed to pull a leg and the tail from his mouth. As I flung the body parts across the street Chandler kept chewing away like he had scored a piece of gourmet beef jerky, and then in one big gulp he swallowed. "Son of a bitch Chandler, are you fucking crazy?", I scolded him. Then I got a whiff of the hand I had used to try and wrestle the iguana meat from his mouth. The smell could best be described as a bum's sock that had been worn non-stop for months, and then dipped into a septic tank.

After making it home and scrubbing my hand under scalding hot water for five minutes, I called the veterinarian. “Those iguana carcasses carry botulism, you have to get it out of him right away!", she informed me, "Take a turkey baster and squirt some hydrogen peroxide down his throat. It will cause him to vomit the iguana.” After asking her to repeat that twice and questioning whether that was worse than the iguana, the vet convinced me to follow her advice. So five minutes after administrating the said remedy to Chandler, he barfed a pile of goo up in the back yard. Great, I thought, it worked! Two minutes later, in the bathroom on the pretty little rug Mark had in there, Chandler barfed again. This time the entire iguana, minus one leg and the tail, came up. As I bent over the mess and cleaned it up, the grossest odor I have ever smelled filled my nostrils. Between gags, I just kept repeating, “Who is this beast? Where is my loveable little dog?”

The Blight Of The Iguana

Well it seems that Britney and Lindsey, the back yard cats, have settled in nicely. They come when I call them, and Britney will actually sit on my lap. One thing about them however, is that they have yet to show any inclination towards hunting the various vermin that visit our yard. Just yesterday they sat sunning themselves next to the pool, while just three feet away a pigeon strutted back and forth, picking up the crumbs of leftover cat food. I guess they really are like Britney and Lindsey, and thought the pigeon was just there to clean up after them.

One of the critters I expected the cats to help control were the iguanas. This past summer the yard was infested with them, and while they do look exotic and add to the tropical ambience, they eat the flowers and other plants. Luckily nature sometimes takes care of things. The first two weeks of January took us through the longest cold spell that I can ever remember in the twenty one years I have lived here. Iguanas cannot take more than two days of below forty degree temperatures, and after the first day of such cold they were dropping out of the trees in a semi-conscious state. By the second day of frigid temperatures they were starting to die, and now I am coming across dead iguanas everywhere. Actually I am not finding them on my own, Chandler is finding them in among the bushes, and dragging them out to where I can get them. I don't think Chandler is actually pulling them out for me, as much as he is trying to get them out to where he can munch on them more easily. I just have to be alert, because he can swallow the small ones faster than I can suck down a vodka cocktail.