pet connection

We visited the Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park in Grand Cayman yesterday in the hope of seeing iguanas and finding out more about their status on the island, especially after the horrific attack that killed seven of them in May. As we entered the park, the booth attendant asked if we had brought bottled water.

“We won’t be long; we’re here mainly to see the iguanas,” we told her. She said that might take a while, since they roam the park freely. But luck was with us. We started walking down the trail and after about a minute I spotted one heading straight for us, swaggering along, completely unafraid.

I’m assuming he was male because he was more colorful than the female we saw later in an enclosure: pale, turquoise-blue head, swampy green jowls, skin that ranged from greeny-black to jade green, five long toes on each black foot, and spines down his back to the end of his tail. We followed him for a good 20 minutes, and he posed readily for photos, including climbing onto a tree to nibble on some leaves and then wandering onto the brick patio to snack on some purple blossoms lying on the ground.

Signs posted everywhere warn visitors not to pet the iguanas: “They bite.” I can see why people might be tempted to since they’re so approachable. Later, we saw two females in enclosures.

I’d hoped to have more of a report on their status and even invaded the upstairs administrative offices in search of someone to interview, but the iguana project is run by the National Trust rather than the Botanic Park, and there was no one on site who could tell me anything about it. I did discover that a pre-trip email requesting an interview with a Trust employee had probably gone unanswered because the man was on holiday in the U.K. But according to the web site of the Blue Iguana Recovery Program, the reward for information leading to the arrest of the iguana killers has increased to more than $11,000 CI (multiply by 1.25 to get the amount in U.S. dollars). Unfortunately, no leads have been forthcoming.

We had some other great sightings at the Botanic Park. I never really think of birds as carnivores, even though Larry happily eats chicken (we’ve nicknamed him the cannibal bird), but as we entered the park I saw a bird fly into a tree with a tiny lizard in its mouth. It bapped the lizard a couple of times against a branch, then swallowed it whole. A slim black snake (probably a racer), a couple of anole lizards, and an orchid (pale cream with a purple center) growing on a highly caustic maidenplum tree rounded out our visit. We know the maidenplum is highly caustic because our friend Wayne decided to touch it on a previous visit. He was very sorry that he had ignored the sign.

Gratuitous dive blogging: Yesterday we saw a Caribbean reef shark, probably a 6-footer, cruising through Jack McKenney’s Canyon (dive sites are typically named after people or have fancifully descriptive names). Today at Dragon’s Lair I spotted two cleaning stations, a tiny Pederson’s cleaning shrimp, and a big lobster. A cleaning station is sort of like a dentist office or beauty salon for fish. The larger fish such as grouper pull into the equivalent of a gas station bay and open their mouths so that tiny wrasses, gobies, and cleaner shrimp can pick them clean of parasites. Tomorrow is our last day of diving. Sigh. It’s been wonderful. Already I can’t wait to come back.