Lizardo

In honor of Next Chapter Literary Magazine publishing my essay “Pet Pack” in their upcoming issue, I’d like to kick off a series of pet posts. Let’s start with my lizard, Lizardo.

My brother won Lizardo in a dart game at the Seafood Festival when I was in high school. Lizardo was one of three iguanas my brother won at the festival that year. Needless to say, live animals are not appropriate prizes for carnival games, but you know how carnies love theatrics (as I do, too), so it’s hardly surprising.

The other two iguanas were soon rehomed, but Lizardo stayed with me for the next several years. During this time, he grew from eight inches to three feet long. When perched upon my shoulder, his tail hit my knee, and we’d walk about town that way, my lizard and I.

At first, he was easy – Lizardo ate pellets and romaine lettuce with fruit and veggie snacks, and he lived in a reasonable-sized terrarium. I took him for walks with a leash and let him climb trees, to lounge in nature while I read books with my back against the tree trunk. We were a perfect pair.

As he grew, however, Lizardo became problematic. The lizard grew, the cage grew, and the chaos grew. He was beautiful – prismatic green with a majestic crest and knowing eyes, that slithery scaled body and lithe movements – and he knew it. And like all extreme beauties, Lizardo was insufferable.

He wouldn’t stay in his tank. He knocked off the weights on top and went roaming the apartment at will. He pooped on my record collection. He lazed in the windowsills, spread out like a deflated balloon. He ran across the wood floors with nails clacking, accosting whoever was in the kitchen, begging for a snack. He did not respond to discipline, training, or bribery. He was a miniature dinosaur, terrorizing the humans.

The worst part was the mornings. I was a college sophomore with a fondness for sleeping in, and Lizardo had a cage that would not stay closed. He took to assaulting me for fresh lettuce at daybreak, even though he had plenty of food. He climbed from his tank onto my slumbering body, biting me and whipping me with his tail. That tail was powerful and left marks. He was more than half my size at this point, and I can’t put into words how it feels to be woken daily by a large and angry lizard. His life as a free-range iguana was unsustainable, but I couldn’t fit a larger tank in my apartment.

So, I found a nearby reptile club and contacted a fellow lizard-lover who had space for a three-foot dinosaur. Lizardo left for greener pastures, and I was able to sleep in peace. Until the next pet.

– by Jessi Waugh