Blame it on the rain

Maybe I should rename my blog “Rhymes with Marijuana” or Madonna. Or Yo Mama. Since I’ve changed format to be all iguana, all the time.

I feel better today. I’d been thinking that Emerald might still be alive if we hadn’t moved in with Rob, and my saying the apartment killed him wasn’t making Rob feel too good. After Rob fell asleep last night, I remembered that we had 25-plus consecutive days of rain. I think Olympia had more rain than Bellingham, even. So Emerald might have gotten sick if we’d still be in the old apartment. Maybe it would have been worse, because he tended not to sit under the fluorescent light, but on top of it.

As I took down his cage yesterday, I saw some of the white residue that iguanas snort to clear salt out of their systems on the side of the light. That must be seriously old, since he hasn’t sat on top of the cage blowing his nose on the light for months.

There’s the nagging feeling that if I’d taken him to the vet sooner, he could have been saved. I can’t believe how quickly he deteriorated between last Wednesday and Monday. Turns out, all the books warn about this…So then there’s the embarrassment that this vet, whom I’d never seen before, thinks I’m a terrible iguana mother, bringing in an animal so close to death. But so what if he does? Grand scheme, it doesn’t matter if he thinks I was a good mom or not.

Our phone conversations went like this:

Vet: Emerald’s doing better.
Me: Oh good.
Vet: He’s starting to hold his legs in the correct position.
Me: Oh good.
Vet: You can come get him this afternoon.
Me: Oh good.

Two and a half hours later:

Vet: Emerald has passed away.
Me: Oh no.
Vet: He was doing better, he even flicked his tail at me, but then he died.
Me: Oh no.
Vet: We were all so excited this morning, but as I said, he was pretty critical last night.
Me: Oh no.

…and so on.

Have I driven my five readers away with my maudlin reminiscences?

I can’t even count how many weird Emerald-centric dreams I’ve had. Lots of them where his tail broke off. Sometimes because I pulled it, other times I’d discover the severed tail on the floor of the cage.

Other dreams involved him biting me (which he used to do in real life, too). Then there’s the one where there are lots of little Emeralds slipping through the slats of the cage.

What a relief it was to wake up and have everything be OK. Not so much looking forward to waking up from my Emerald dreams from now on…

Some shouts out

Because I can’t think of anything but my lost little friend, I’ll continue eulogizing.

I’d like to mention some of the people who helped care for Emerald at one time or other:

  • The Katz family in Chicago, whose little boy got a little scratched up;
  • My Aunt Barb in Indiana and cousin-in-law Bill who carried him around on his shoulders;
  • Steve and Maria, who had to lure Emerald back into his cage with food;
  • Allison, whose arm got mistaken for a banana;
  • Ron, who called my friends every night while I was away and said, “The lizard! She is dead!” (not quite so funny anymore) because Emerald hardly moved and Ron tended to mix up his gender pronouns;
  • Stephanie, who wrestled with him when he broke through a screen window;

and most of all, my mom, who took care of the little green beast, despite not wanting to touch him, for a year and a half while I was in Prague.

Emerald loved bananas, green onions and climbing inside lampshades. The first time I thought I I lost him forever was in Chicago, when he crawled under the dishwasher. When he was smaller, I once found him on top of the VCR, with his tail sticking out of the hole in the TV stand with the electrical cords. I enjoyed waking up to find him sitting in front of the heating vent.

It’s funny how I’m playing a little flashback montage of our life together in my head. Wonder what song should be playing…

The Emerald Buddha

I guess I forgot we aren’t Christian. Maybe God is punishing me for failing to condemn homosexuals.

Turns out, my little Emerald Buddha was in his final reclining pose when last I saw him. I miss him already, but it makes me feel better to remember all our good times, so here goes.

In our old apartment (the one that didn’t kill him), he liked to crawl on top of the cage and lie on top of the light. He was paper trained, so he’d go in the cage to poop and then get in his hammock. He was always on top of the cage or in his hammock when I came home. I could see little tail trails on the carpet where he had wandered around the place, only to wind up in the exact place I left him.

One time when I was out of town, a coworker was feeding him and said she couldn’t find him at first. Turned out he was on my bed, with his head on my pillow. I never saw him do that.

Sometimes when I came home, or when I got up in the morning, he’d come barrelling toward me, and I wasn’t sure if he wanted food or attention or what. And there were times he would climb up over my lap to get on the back of the couch, as though I was just a convenient ladder.

In Chicago, I used to take him for walks along the lakefront.

After the vet called this morning, I was so excited and relieved and thought I had another chance. I was going to move him to a better spot, take him out more often, take him outside in the sunshine, now that it’s getting warmer…I found a harness online and was about to buy it. Good thing I had a question about it, cus it would have been pretty stupid to spend $10 on the thing before he’d even come home from the hospital.

I feel just awful and responsible. I wish it had been cancer or old age, cus then I could shrug and say, “Everyone’s gotta go sometime.” I managed to keep him alive all this time, so how could I have screwed up so badly just in the last couple of months?

I loved him very much. I can’t believe I had him almost seven years. He rode with me cross country, and lived with me in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C. and three cities in Washington State (a bit of trivia is that he was procured at a Seattle pet store, so he’s actually from here). When he died, he was probably three times the size that he was when I got him. About 4.5 feet long and he weighed 3 kg at the vet’s, but that was after not eating for a few weeks. He had turned pretty orange in his maturity. A couple of years ago, he went through puberty and he started humping the couch, but he outgrew that phase.

Emerald was very precious to me and I hope that he had a nice life with me.

Happy Easter!

Apparently, Emerald decided to celebrate by re-enacting the resurrection. He’s doing better and the vet is encouraged. I’m picking him up this afternoon.

Hooray!

Here’s Emerald during our first tulip season in Burlington. Oddly enough, I may have just left him to die there.

He was in bad shape when I came home to get him. If he’d looked like that yesterday, I would have taken him to an emergency vet.

I took him out of his hammock and his head lolled backward and his eyes were rolled back into his head. I had to check and make sure he wasn’t already dead.

In the car, he lay with his arms flat beside him with the palms up. He perked up and looked around a little. I pet him and put my fingers in the fleshy part of his palm like I was holding his hand, or I guess technically it was his foot.

The vet said he was critical and kept him overnight to get some fluids in him. There’s a chance he could regain his strength and be OK, but I’m expecting the worst.

The vet also said Emerald’s bones were real soft in his legs, but I’m not sure that’s correct. I think that’s what they’re trained to look for first, because most iguanas suffer from metabolic bone disease. Emerald’s legs felt fine to me, they were simply limp because he was so weak. He was standing on them yesterday. His jaw was strong, and that’s what I’ve been using to gauge his health. S’pose I could have been wrong.

That’s what’s torturing me — thinking i’ve done something wrong. that i should have replaced his UV light sooner, which yes, definitely I should have, but the the vet did say that without natural light — unfiltered sunlight — it doesn’t matter what i did with UV lamps. Then again, for three years in Burlington and Lacey, Emerald never went outside, and only got his light through the window and the UV light.

This apartment killed him. Or the fact that there hasn’t been any sunlight since January. If only I’d known something was wrong sooner. But he’s gone without eating lots of times, and always has bounced back.

I didn’t know he was that sick.

C’mon little guy. You can do it! Pull through!

Bad sign

Emerald’s sick. I e-mailed the closest herp vet (Burlington) and described the problem, asking if he thought it could wait til Wednesday, when they have later office hours. The receptionist called and said he thought it couldn’t.

Oh crap. I should have done something a couple of weeks ago when he stopped eating and pooping, but I figured it was just the weather. He looked fine. Maybe a little depressed, but basically healthy. I’d hold food in front of him and he’d sort of look at me like, “You expect me to come crawling over there for that?”

Then he pooped on his hammock last week, which has never happened because he is paper trained. So that’s when I decided to actually take care of my precious iguana. I got a new UV bulb for him, and a skin spritzer and some soft food that I thought he might actually eat.

No change in his condition by Friday night, so I took him out and let him wander a bit. He didn’t go far. And recoiled at my touch.

Saturday I spoon-fed him bananas and the store-bought food. He would open his mouth, as though to bite me and I’d stick food in there, but rather than swallow it, he’d just let it drop out of his mouth. I got a couple of bites down.

Then I noticed that he had a stuffed nose and was wheezing a little bit. When he opened his mouth to bite me, there were strands of saliva between the upper and lower jaw. It took me two days to figure out that wasn’t normal. I haven’t spent a lot of time looking in his open mouth, OK?

And I read in the Iguana Book that iguanas are very good at hiding it when they are sick, so once you see a symptom, they’ve probably been sick a while.

But by then, it was too late to go to any vets that had Saturday hours, even if I could find a herp expert in the area.

Yesterday I bathed him and wrapped him in an electric blanket and force fed him two pieces of zucchini. He let me hold him, and laid his little iguana head on my arm. This made me feel better because when I try to pet him, he opens his mouth at me agressively and shakes.

And today I’ll leave work early to take him to the vet.

I feel like a terrible, negligent mother. I took for granted how healthy and low-maintenance he was and didn’t immediately seek help when I knew something was wrong.

Then again, he’s 8 years old. And this is the first time that he’s been sick under my watch. That I know of. (He came home from the pet store with a parasite, but that was before he was mine.)