I’m not sure when I first saw an image of a marine iguana, but it might’ve been on Instagram. I follow a photographer, Christina Mittermeier (@mitty) who posts a lot of cool marine wildlife photography, including these iguanas which, you know, I cannot escape the fact that they have hands.
I’m sure they’re very neat creatures and everything, but do they just not know they have hands?
I mean.
Anyway I know that I’m being a silly baby, but I also know that if I ever went to the Galapagos and saw one of these I would just straight up die. A thing I never knew I was afraid of, but am viscerally afraid of is a swimming iguana with hands; my overactive imagination conjures up what it would feel like to be grabbed by scaly iguana hands and dragged off into the ocean to die. Why would marine iguanas kill me? Honestly, they wouldn’t. They’re herbivores. They eat algae.
But. HANDS.
Speaking of animals that could kill you but won’t, this month marked the 6th anniversary of the day I was out doing errands and then decided to go to the shelter and get a dog, completely spur-of-the-moment, as one does. I met Shadow (at the time named Baloo) that day, a big, goofly lug, and decided what the hell, might as well adopt him, so I did.
It’s hard for me to believe that he’s been around for as long as 6 years, but I am grateful for every single one of them, even though he was insane for a while after coming home with me and I thought I was going to have to take him back to the shelter every day for months.
For one thing, looking at him in this sad cement room in the shelter, I had no idea how big he actually was, because I didn’t see him in context of my house. Whe I got him home, I realized that he was more of a gentle giant, minus the gentle part, because oh boy was he not gentle.
On Day 1 he peed on everything in the house to mark it, and by Day 2 I had to take him to the emergency vet because he had licked open his sutures from his neuter surgery and I thought that maybe having an open wound on his empty ballsack was bad?
He banged that cone into doorways and furniture all the time and by the end of the two weeks when he was able to take it off, it was being held together with good intentions and also duct tape. I learned a lot about him right out of the gates, not least of which was that licking his empty ballsack is one of his favorite hobbies.
I sure have written “ballsack” in this post a lot. Really looking forward to my search keywords in a few months.
Anyway, all of that is to say that today he really is a gentle giant who meets me at the bottom of the stairs every morning so I can give him pets and tell him he is a good boy while he wags his tail and leans into me. He really is a good boy — smart and silly and with an uncanny ability to tell time.
I notice that sometimes when we take him out for walks, folks go out of their way to avoid him, giving him a wide berth or sometimes even crossing the street. It’s funny to me because sure, he could probably do a murder if he wanted to, but he mostly just wants snacks and car rides and I can’t think of a less scary dog.
Even if he does have crazy eyes.
I guess it just comes down to what’s familiar, doesn’t it?
2 responses to “of iguana hands, big goofy dogs, and fear”
Your dog definitely has Manson eyes, but also somehow looks like a very good boy.
He is a very good boy, and also incredibly animated. If he were a human he would be a theater kid.