R Draconis

Today is a tribute of sorts. If you're not into memorials come back tomorrow, and maybe I'll be entertaining like I promised to be yesterday.

Two acquaintances of mine are grieving the loss of their iguana. It might seem a stretch to most of us to imagine feeling anything but a possible revulsion for a cold-blooded animal. My taste in pets is obvious in previous entries: I want a warm, huggable friend. Hugging a scaly animal that wields a whip-lash tail just won't do. That cold blood implies a remoteness; and our standard view of reptiles certainly does not place them high enough on the intelligence scale to win us over with their personalities. At least, that's where I would have stood, before encountering this iguana.

But we warm-blooded creatures do not have a monopoly on personality and intelligence. If you allow, as I do, that a sense of humor is a definite indicator of intelligence, then we need to include this lady-lizard in the highest animal echelons, with personality in abundance. I realize I'm endangering my freedom from a straight-jacket by making these claims. All I saw, at first introduction, was a fascinating new thing to observe and learn about. But time taught me more than I expected. She could hold her own with dogs and horses, and could out-disdain any cat.

This couple acquired the female iguana as a rescued discard. They had no idea at the time if it was male or female, and had a lot of work to do to restore its health. Both were also totally unprepared to meet the needs of their new acquisition, and did prodigious amounts of research attempting to correct their ignorance. They succeeded. She flourished. Her health, comfort, and enjoyment became, perforce, one of the central themes of their lives. Believe it or not, iguanas require very exacting care, environment, diets and interaction. She's gone now only because of some epidemic syndrome that is being observed throughout the community of caretakers, and has, despite frantic studying and testing, not yet been identified as to cause or cure.

But the care and raising of iguanas is not my focus. The love of an alien is. She teased her people, like any other pet. She chose toys, demonstrated likes and dislikes, a need for physical contact, a curiosity about other animals, an appreciation of beauty. I swear, she actually built structures from the odds and ends in her home-cage, for no more obvious reason than that she liked to do it. Watching her over the years, I never lost my sense of her as "other." To successfully understand that dog of mine, I have to think like a pack animal. To understand a reptile bent my mind around corners that I simply could not take at times. But her owners went where I couldn't. She valued them, that was obvious. Whether you could call it love is something better minds will have to judge. But for sure, they loved her. No one goes to the lengths they did without feeling an emotional need. And their sorrow now is the best proof of that love.

I feel for their loss because I lost, too. She didn't just tolerate me, she liked me. And I her. You know, if we all took the time to put aside our arrogance as the acme of creation, actually took a long look and attempted to understand what we see in the zoo, we might discover we have a lot of potential friends and companions roaming this earth. Just because an animal can't be hugged, subdued, or put to work, doesn't negate its value to us. Maybe Donne's words about any death diminishing us could be applied to more than man. And--maybe--if we took that view, we'd be less inclined to indifferent destruction of the rest of creation.