Vicky's iguana story from CamShow 2022-12-26

[ErikB]

As Vicky was telling her iguana story about the guy who was going to cook up a 4-foot iguana that fell out of the trees, I was going to type "Florida Man". I hit something wrong and got logged out. By the time I made it back in, the story (and the show) was over. So, what happened?

Also, we had two iguanas as pets when I was a young kid. My father built an enclosure for them that took up one wall of the dining room. My father wore a leather glove when handling the male (Larry) because he was prone to whip. We eventually had to donate them to the zoo in Buffalo, New York.

[CGYMike]

.....so apparently Eric, iguanas in the cold, being cold blooded, grind to a halt in the cold temperatures.

Dude decided to pick up a few of them and take them home for lunch, and as the car was warm, the iguanas begin to get their mobility back and apparently attacked this guy in the car as he drove them home :)

pretty damn funny if you ask me, but people are pretty stupid, so there is that !!! hahahaha

The archive is up and running if you want to hear it from Vicky...

https://www.audacy.com/fm1019/blogs/mat ... en-iguanas

https://shoeuntied.wordpress.com/2022/1 ... aks-loose/

[greggl]

I'd be rooting for the iguanas lol

[ErikB]

Thanks CGYMike!

@greggl - Me too!

I wonder if my mom still has the photos of Larry running down the hallway in the apartment we were in at the time....

[stickyvicky]

I would like to see those pictures Erik!! So where did you live exactly when you had iguanas as pets?

[ErikB]

I would like to see those pictures Erik!! So where did you live exactly when you had iguanas as pets?

I'd like to see them again myself. I will have to ask my mom where the family photo album is. I hope we took a picture of the cage, too. It was impressive. My father stapled fake vegetation to the back wall, and "found" this neat twisted tree stump (or was it two?) that the iguanas could hide in and climb to get to their sunning shelf. One of my early chores was to plug and unplug the sunning lights. I got a zap and learned about pulling on the plugs and not the cords. The front face of the cage consisted of two panels hinged to a piece of wood than ran along the middle. So, the upper panel could rotate outward and down to form a shelf that the iguanas learned was for treat time and handling time, and the lower panel could rotate outward and up for cleaning the cage.

I was living in Rochester, New York, which is the next major city east of Buffalo, NY, where I went to college. As a child, my lake-effect snow came from Lake Ontario. As a college kid, my lake-effect snow came from Lake Erie. When I was 1, my parents moved from an apartment somewhere else in the city to an old house that had been converted into two apartments, one upstairs and one downstairs. The landlord and his family lived downstairs. This was one of the earliest houses on the street, and was first built for a wealthier family judging by the narrow, spiral servant's staircase that went from our apartment to the kitchen in the downstairs apartment. Also the front entrance to the house was a heavy wooden double door with fancy iron filigree on the edges. The house was so old that someone with some nostalgic taste decided to leave one of the gas light sconces on the wall (disconnected, of course) when they converted to electric, and it was still there when we lived in the apartment. It was nothing fancy, but it was still cool to know that it was a gas light left over from the early days of the house.

I remember we had a third iguana, but do not remember his/her name or gender. It did not get along with Larry and Tammy, the other two iguanas, so we had to sell to someone. As a kid, I was really upset.

Prior to the iguana cage taking up the dining-room wall, we had an array of fish tanks. I remember the red-eared slider turtle in one tank, and I remember the big tank with an Oscar and a large Plecostomus (sucker-mouthed catfish).

We also tried to take care of a Myna bird, but they are too social and we could not provide enough interaction to keep him happy, so we gave him to someone who could. I think we have a picture of him, though. We named him Bobby. We also had a parakeet who lived to be quite old (for a parakeet). I don't remember whether we got him while in the apartment, but we definitely had him while we were in the house next door. My parents bought the house next door when I was in my early teens. That made the move pretty easy. The iguanas were donated to the Buffalo zoo long before then, I think.

And of course, the dogs. Snoopy (mix - apartment), Scotty (Scottish Terrier - house), Sheba (Red Doberman - house), and Schatzie (Red Doberman - house).

Wow, and I almost forgot about our rodents! I had gerbils at one time, and I think we had a picture of one on my arm. Later on we were going to get mice, but the landlord's wife thought that was too much like importing pests should any get loose, so we switched and got a hamster. The actual pets were at the apartment. Then, at the house, we had a mouse infestation of the natural kind. It was kind of funny opening the broom-closet/spice-rack-cabinet and having several surprised mice hopping up and down because in their panic they couldn't find the way out. Scotty the terrier was barking at them but didn't know what else to do, and the Doberman (Sheba, probably, at that point) just watched from the safety of the kitchen doorway. I think we started with bait, but my mom did not want one of the dogs to eat a poisoned mouse. One day I heard a rustling coming from the trash can next to the couch in the living room. It seems a mouse had hopped onto the corner table and filled up on the peanuts kept in a wooden teardrop bowl (ah, the 70's!). It ate so much that it failed the jump back over to the couch and landed in the garbage. The springy paper that was in there kept it from jumping back out (and boy was it trying). That gave me an idea. I took the rectangular garbage pail and kept some paper in the bottom. I took one of the rectangular aluminum trays my mom was using to hold paint stripper (bannister restoration project) and used rubber bands to attach a wooden dowel to the underside off-center. Then I made double-sided tape and taped some nuts to the inside of the tray on the long end of the pivot. I took a couple of magnets and stuck them to each other through the tray on the short end, and adjusted them until the tray was level when the dowel was put on top of the garbage bucket. Then I took a long stick and propped it up against the bucket and put the whole thing in the kitchen near where I knew the mice had chewed a hole in the wall. My father was a little skeptical of the Rube Goldberg setup, but it worked! We caught 4 adult mice every day for about a week, then some smaller mice, then nothing. Each morning, with the dogs excitedly listening to all the rustling going on, we put a cloth over the top of the bucket and drove it to the park next to the Rochester zoo. This park had a pond and some heavily-forested areas, and we let the mice go in the woods. Also, much earlier in my childhood, the pond was where we released a very large turtle that somehow was found wandering around our neighborhood (abandoned pet maybe?).

[stickyvicky]

I'm so glad you didn't kill the mice and relocated them instead! Here in Tampa all the beautiful owls are dying because people poison the mice and rats.

[ErikB]

I'm so glad you didn't kill the mice and relocated them instead! Here in Tampa all the beautiful owls are dying because people poison the mice and rats.

Funny you should mention owls. We get Great Horned owls in this area. Just last night I was listening to one that sounded very close. A month or two ago I was listening to two of them. One of them sounded like it was behind me (direction, not distance) and the other, higher-pitched one was in front of me (again, direction relative to my computer setup, not closeness).

[Davest]

I was living in Rochester, New York, which is the next major city east of Buffalo, NY, where I went to college. As a child, my lake-effect snow came from Lake Ontario. As a college kid, my lake-effect snow came from Lake Erie.

LOL, I went to school at RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) for a year, then took fives years off, and finished at UB (University of Buffalo).

[greggl]

I'm so glad you didn't kill the mice and relocated them instead! Here in Tampa all the beautiful owls are dying because people poison the mice and rats.

If you are going to relocate them make sure it is a good distance. Mice are able to find their way back to their nest from 6 miles away.

[ErikB]

I'm so glad you didn't kill the mice and relocated them instead! Here in Tampa all the beautiful owls are dying because people poison the mice and rats.

If you are going to relocate them make sure it is a good distance. Mice are able to find their way back to their nest from 6 miles away.

With that large of a distance, that makes me think it would only be true if the mice had worked their own way the six miles to begin with. I would think that a car trip would break any bearings they might have. Also, I was talking to my mom today, and I reminded her of the incident. She told me about also having to cross the river. I just checked the map, and the Seneca Park Zoo is right next to Seneca Park, which is across the Genesee river from the side of the city we lived on. It might even be less than 6 miles as the crow flies, since I was able to find my old street and house pretty quickly. But, as I said, the mice would have had to adjust for a car ride and a large river being in their way.

[ErikB]

I was living in Rochester, New York, which is the next major city east of Buffalo, NY, where I went to college. As a child, my lake-effect snow came from Lake Ontario. As a college kid, my lake-effect snow came from Lake Erie.

LOL, I went to school at RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) for a year, then took fives years off, and finished at UB (University of Buffalo).

So you know the deal, then. I was surprised at the number of people I met at work that also went to UB, and there was one guy (a mathematician) who did all his work at University of Rochester. I think he was originally from New York City.