Christmas is here and I have yet another bizarre story for you. This one takes place a long time ago during my senior year of high school. In my school there was a science teacher who I did not know anything about except that he owned a huge iguana. A friend of mine was telling me about it one day and we decided to go check it out. However, this sight was actually very grim. This iguana was about 4 feet long but was sitting in a cage that was only 3 feet long. He could not even turn around in there and I was disgusted to see him like that. So, like the Grinch that I am I started to devise a Christmas heist of my own. Now, the story of his rescue is a great adventure and one that I will share in another post. This post, however, is dedicated to what happened after I got him out.
Once I got him home it was clear that he was very malnourished. I took to trying to nurse him back to health and find him a new home. I decided to name him Godzuki. I didn’t have a cage that could fit the 4 foot Godzuki, so I built him a ring shaped wall in a spare bedroom. However, once he got his strength back, he was always anxious to get out of the room and wander the house; this didn’t bother me at all, since he was a very kind lizard.
Christmas was coming up and my mother was very good at picking and decorating huge trees. On this particular day I had just gotten back from my older sister Jessie’s house who had wrapped my gifts for me (Click the link on the bottom to read about that story as well). When I walked in I went and placed them under the tree. I just finished and stood up to admire how it all looked when suddenly there was movement in the tree and all the ornaments shook. I was reminded of my all-time favorite Christmas movie: Christmas Vacation, and took a step back, nervous of what angry animal could have made its home in my tree.
My staring must have seemed quite odd, because my mom walked up to me and asked “What is going on?”“Where are the dogs?” I asked in return.“I think they are out—.” She was interrupted by the tree shaking again.
We looked at each other until I said, more to the tree than anything, “I am going to get my dogs, and it is going to eat whatever creature is in there.” To this, the tree shook again. My mom looked over at me and said “I don’t think it is scared of your fat dogs.” She and I continued to look deeper until we saw it: A small yellow eye staring back at us. It was a very jarring sight to see a body-less eye starring at me from inside of a tree. However, the more we looked the more his green body started to appear. Camouflaged and hidden one thing was certain… there has never been an animal alive who was happier than he was at that moment.
After this it became a regular occurrence to walk past the tree and see some part of him sticking out. One time I even hung a large Christmas bulb from his tail… He let it sit there for at least an hour. However, Godzuki’s time in his tree was coming to an end. Christmas day was approaching and my mother made it very clear that a lizard in tree in the morning was just not going to work. She told me to lock him up and make sure that he could not get out.
I pulled him out of the tree on Christmas Eve and took him into the spare room. He knew what was in store and wanted no part of it. As I laid him on the ground I felt bad. What he didn’t know when I ripped him from the tree that he loved was that he would never be going back. After this night there would be no more tree to hang around in. As I started to walk out of the room I looked back to see him attempting to climb over the makeshift wall. A few more attempts and he would make it over for sure. The only thing preventing him from getting back to his tree would be the bedroom door. As I reached up to close the door I stopped one last time and looked into the room. He had made it to the top of the wall, but not over it. He was simply stopped. Staring at me. I took my hand off the door and said “Merry Christmas lizard… Go take back your home and make sure to scare Santa and mom when you get there.” And I walked off leaving the door wide open. I attempted to explain my reasons to my mother in the morning, but she already understood… Everyone deserves to be where they want to be on Christmas. I know that is not always possible, but in the case of Godzuki, the choice was easy.
I hope that you are where you want to be.
Merry Christmas.
Not finished with Christmas yet? Well, I have a great story about wrapping presents right here!
As Random As Random Gets 