pet connection

You have to have a wicked sense of humor to pose your huge iguana in your knitted finery, but that’s Melissa Kaplan. Author of “Iguanas for Dummies,” she lives with one of the most entertaining lizards know to mankind: Mikey, a captive bred Cyclura hybrid: to be exact, Mikey is a 24-pound, 11-year old brown iguana with a snout-to-vent (crotch) length of 23.5 inches and a snout-to-tail tip length of 51.75 inches. Yep, that’s almost four and a half feet from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail.

Yeah. 24 pounds. Mikey is two pounds heavier than my dog Ginger. Think about it.

Mikey is an excellent model because he loves the camera as much as it loves him. No underwear-sporting human male model can do a better job. Sometimes when he’s in a grumpy mood, Melissa gets him to chill out by bringing out the camera. This guy is a rock star, and other models are green with envy.

If Mike sees Melissa come in to “his” room carrying a camera or with knitted stuff, he immediately goes into a pose and holds it.  He doesn’t move around until she takes whatever he is modeling off of him, or she shutters up the camera.  Consequently, she just carefully drapes whatever it is on or around him, and then takes it off the same way, so nothing she has knit is ever harmed.

Mikey gets annoyed when Melissa photographs items she’s laid out on a towel rather than on him, like “WHAT?  I’m not good enough for you now?” while holding his pose. I like to envision Mikey on a cruise with all those on-board photographers. It would be All Mike All the Time.

At her Lizards in Scarves blog, you can see other photos like these. Here’s Mikey strutting down the catwalk with Melissa’s latest shawl, knit from yarn I sent her. It’s probably not his best color, but it looks good.

You know how Home Depot lets you bring in dogs? Mikey has been to Home Depot. He rode around in a cart and played King of the Mountain. The boy stopped traffic. I’m sure more than a few shoppers hoofed it rapidly to another aisle. All Melissa could say was that no one noticed “poor” Sidney, the dark and glossy 100-pound Doberman who went there with them and usually commands attention. I’m sure that will come up in Sid’s therapy. No dummy, Sid gives Mikey a wide berth anyway. Sid has a pretty good clue about what that tail can do.

Mikey is the iguana of every herp lover’s dreams. He’s made a career for himself out of modeling Melissa’s knitting: some of it’s finished, some of it is work in progress (Melissa knits a lot. I mean, the woman knits hats for her turtle’s eggs.) Mikey runs the house with an iron tail, which Melissa will protest, but I beg to differ. He just can’t face the day without a warm bath. It’s a good thing he hasn’t discovered mocha cappuccino with a half twist.

If you’re interested in getting an iguana, read what Melissa has written both in Iguanas for Dummies as well as her well-regarded site, Anapsid.org. She explains the fun stuff as well the not-so-fun stuff; there’s plenty of both (he gets cranky during mating season), so you’ll need to know if you are up for dealing with the not-so-fun stuff before sinking into green or brown bliss.