I like lizards. I do. But this one… (face palm).
Pop is gorgeous. Mesmerizing, really. He’s strong and muscular and has beautiful eyes. He’s smart. He’s big, at least six feet from nose tip to tail. He’s about 2x larger than he was when he came to the outdoor learning center, and because he’s grown so much his enclosure (4′ deep, 9′ long, 9′ tall) is likely verging on too small. He’s opinionated, and may or may not also be hormonal, territorial, hungry… unknown.
If I’m the first to arrive at the OLC for the day, I feed him right after I turn off the alarm so he doesn’t have to watch people moving around the classroom/not feeding him when he’s hungry. On this particular day, we were completely out of food when I got in, so I had to skip it and headed out to the sanctuary to work with the birds.
When I finished with the birds, I came back through the classroom and asked the inside animal volunteer if there was anything I could do to help her out… and that’s how Pop and I butted heads on that day. The food had been restocked by then, so it was *theoretically* possible to give Pop a big bowl of greens.
When Pop is upset about something (origin known or unknown), he hangs out on one of his shelves close to the enclosure door, does pushups, flashes his wattle, and threatens to jump at whomever opens the door. He was doing that last Thursday. It’s terrifying, and some volunteers aren’t comfortable dealing with it.
Completely understandable. I’m not comfortable with it, either. But we all want Pop to be able to eat and I had the time to work with him for a few minutes.
So I pulled out a couple of big collard green leaves, washed them, and then used them as a “target” to get Pop’s attention and direct him to his upper hammock. I was outside of his enclosure (one side is 2/3 windows, so he could see me just fine, but the target wasn’t “real” because he couldn’t get to it). When he decided that that’s NOT what he wanted to do, I put the leaves on a chair where he could see them and walked away for a few minutes — to feed the other iguana in a different enclosure.
We did this three of four times over the course of 30 minutes, me showing him the leaves and directing him to his hammock, and then walking away when he decided that it wasn’t going to happen at that moment.
Eventually Pop decided to head up to his upper hammock and I was able to put the big collard green leaves in the enclosure on his lower hammock (just under the highest one). Rather than step down to them (totally possible), he leapt on them… not at all intimidating (ugh)… which gave me enough time to pull his bowl out, fill it with greens and put it back.
I snapped the photo of him hanging out over his bowl.
Carmen Yount 