Saturday, September 6, 2008

Long Arms on the Lizard

I had arrived back at the house after work, and was sitting in my car listening to the radio for a minute. As I climbed out, movement caught the corner of my eye, and I turned and looked to see a 3 foot plus lizard stalking slowly through the grass of the lawn across the street! I walked a little closer and was bemusedly looking at it when a red Ford pulled up to the house. I waited until a middle-aged gentleman got out, and called over:

Hey! Did you know there's an iguana in your yard?


He looked confused, and walked closer. "What?"

An iguana. There's an iguana right here.

"Where?

Look at the base of that tree.


"Holy $%^."

Well, iguana aren't apex predators, so I felt fairly safe from the big guy, who actually looked to my eyes to be about 3'5". I called my brother Randy and spoke with him for a few minutes to be sure I wasn't looking at something like a monitor. I told my neighbors that the iguana wouldn't hurt anything, and that I would probably just wait until he came down the tree he had just climbed and then call animal control before it got too cold this Fall, but they'd already called the cops.

I went across the street, and inside. A few minutes later, there was a knock on my door, and when I stepped outside, a sheriff's deputy from the Augusta County Sheriff's Department was there.

"Sir, do you have an iguana?"

I spoke with the deputy for a couple of minutes, and then offered to pick up Iggy for him. I snagged a handy piece of PVC to hold his head down, and was slowly sliding it over and past his head to hold him down when the deputy told me that animal control wasn't actually on its way, and that he wouldn't be taking the thing out of his car! I stopped my efforts until another, very young little deputy showed up.

We were told animal control was indeed on its way, and I helped Deputy Wilkerson catch the iguana, and then he carried it to his cruiser and made the call:

"10-31 to dispatch. I have one iguana in custody."

1 comment:

phlegmfatale said...

And that cop's got a good lizard story, now!


HallowE09