UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL WITH IGGY

For some reason my oldest daughter and her children love animals. WEIRD animals. Snakes, turtles, tarantulas, and iguanas. They also have cats and a dog. But we will concentrate only on the iguana at the moment. Grandson brings home this little iguana. Named him Jigsaw. Everybody else called him Iggy. I cannot put in print what I called him. Every weekend when I went to their house Iggy got a little bigger. The daughter has enough hair for 14 people and this Iggy loved her hair. One weekend she told me to watch because she had taught Iggy a new trick. There was a window air conditioner unit in the kitchen. She would stand about 6 feet away from it with Iggy in her hair and Iggy would jump to the air conditioner. And then when he got tired of the view from the air conditioner, she would lower her head and he'd jump back in her hair. Yeah, yeah, good trick, now put him away. They usually let Iggy have the run of the house. He would climb to the top of the living room curtains and just stare at me with that evil eye. As long as he stayed on the top of the curtains and away from me we could remain civil to one another. They neglected to tell me that now Iggy was taking showers with them and he loved the hot water.

Since I lived 30 minutes away from them, and being stuck in rush hour traffic in a big city, I usually had to run to the potty as soon as I got there (curse of drinking too much coffee). This day was no different EXCEPT.....

There had been an accident on the highway which added an hour to my drive to get to their house, which caused a greater sense of urgency, so when I got there I made a mad dash to the bathroom. Barely made it. Made a perfect 3-point landing on the commode when I caught something out of the corner of my eye. It was IGGY, in mid-flight, from the top of the shower curtain rod aiming for my hair. All I saw was his under belly and arms and legs and tail waving wildly as he flew through the air. Landed in my hair. The things that went on in that 30 seconds caused them to have to remodel their bathroom, get a new shower curtain and a new shower curtain rod, replace the toilet paper holder and the towel rack, and caused my grandson to build a new piece of furniture to house the iguana. When I made it out of the bathroom there was my daughter and her 3 children all in a lump outside the bathroom door laughing hysterically, even though I was wearing my mad face.