My errant iguana is at it again.
Friday night I went out with a friend of mine for dinner after work. Just as I was dropping her off at her house, I get a panicked call from my mother, who had apparently decided to come over and check on my reptiles. She does this every so often for reasons I can't determine, but she's been downright afraid of Don Iguan since he bit me, and won't go near him.
So I get the call, and I can tell she's freaked out. "Your iguana is out of his cage!" She whispered, as if she was afraid he'd hear her voice and jump out at her, "And you left the door to the room open so he can be anywhere in the house!!" I'm on my way home anyway, but I hurry up just a little.
At this point I'm just puzzled, because I had the cage locked pretty securely. It's a wooden cage, mostly, with plexiglass doors and mesh screen in places. When I get home, I see it. He'd actually managed to somehow jump up in a place about twice his height, push the mesh free of the metal staple holding it in place, and squeeze himself through this tiny hole to freedom. Maybe I should change his name to Houdini.
So I now have to find him. The temps of most of the rest of my house is comfortable for me, which means it would be cold for him, so I didn't think he would have gotten too far. Thus, I started my investigation in my room, which adjoins the reptile room.
Sure enough, he hadn't gotten far at all. I'm looking around the room for a piece of his tail, or something, when I look up and see the broken remains of my curtain rod hanging limply from the top of the window. He'd tried to climb my bedroom curtains, which are made of flimsy, wispy, opaque green material. They, of course, couldn't hold his weight and had come crashing down on top and around him. That had apparently stopped him dead - right under my open window, which was letting in the cool breezes of oncoming autumn.
Great.
So I get out my little crate and quickly get him untangled from the curtains (not easy with his claws) and into the crate. Fortunately he was completely unresisting. Unfortunately, he was completely unresisting. It's much much easier to get a five foot iguana where you want him to go when he's not just laying around like a rag doll. However, once I checked him for injuries and got him back into the nice sweltering reptile room, he perked right up and demanded his dinner.
So now I'm staring at his cage wondering what I'm ever going to be able to do now that he's able to get out and roam at a whim. By this time it's fairly late, and I'm exhausted, so I decide to just go down and get the gigantic dog crate that I use when I take him outside. It's really big and open - nice bars that he can climb all over. I give it a once over, put his regular food and water dishes and plants inside, shuttle him on in, and go to get a little sleep.
The next morning I went in to check on him, and he's just happy as a clam. He's not restlessly trying to get out of the cage, or charging the door, which he does more often than not now. He raises up a little when he sees me, but doesn't freak out. He's warm to the touch and ready to eat right out of my hand again. Hmmmm.... He seems to like the big open new cage. And in the two days since then, it seems to be the same way. I've set up his lights and new basking areas for him, and he seems to love it.
So now I'm thinking I may go ahead and ditch the old cage for him. It seems like he was really stressed out simply because he could not see much outside of the cage. Now that he can, he doesn't seem to want to get out at all. I think I'd like to leave him in it, if he likes it better, but I'm not sure if that's a great idea. Of course it's nice and hot in that room, but there's no real heat gradient, except that he has a basking spot, and a large ledge that casts a shadow. On the other hand he seems really content.
*Sigh* Iguana dilemnas.
