3 of 3 Stories about an Animal Dying: The Final Chapter.

Mother’s Day is a day reserved for for showing your mother how much you care about her….and also for slaughtering iguanas.

Months prior to Mother’s Day, our iguana, named Iguana (my brother and I were extremely imaginative children), had been laying orange hollow eggs around her cage. Most families would have taken the whole egg laying thing as a sign that the reptile was female. My family, stubborn by nature, continued to refer to iguana as “he” and to the iguanas belongings as, “his things.” Soon after the egg laying, the iguana began to poop out its organs. From then on, the iguana walked around with one major internal organ hanging halfway out of it, (A real eye sore). So, the vet told us to ice his butt in hopes that the cold would reduce swelling and urge the organ back inside. I’m not a vet, nor am I actually anyone associated with any profession at all, but prescribing ice to an iguana with half a major organ hanging out of its shit hole seemed a lazy diagnoses. Surely, if your grandmother was shitting out her spleen and the doctor advised, “Just ice it,” you’d probably think he was a fake doctor.

Despite our skepticism, we followed his instructions. We iced that lizards ass everyday over the laundry room sink. Iguana sat there, like a good iguana, darting its coned eyes from side to side, secretly judging me for not separating the lights and darks before putting them in the wash. Like we had all assumed, the ice did nothing but freeze the obtrusion to sub zero temperatures.

Jump to Mother’s Day 2002. My family and I went to my aunts house for brunch. My father left about three minutes after getting there. Saying his hello’s, devouring an entire quiche and sneaking slowly towards an exit is his usual plan of attack at most family gatherings. Shortly after he left, my mother received a call. It was my father. Our iguana was definitely dying. He wasn’t pooping poop. He was now fully pooping out organs. (organing?). My mother, brother and I, still at my aunts, decided we should bring him to the vet to have him put down. My father agreed, we should most definitely put him out of his misery. However, we differed slightly in deciding how we would have the lizard put down. “Why bring him to the vet?” he argued, “I’ve got a shovel. I’ll bring him out back, bop him on the head a few times and that’ll be it.” My mother, brother and I were not on board, to say the least. I threatened to run away. We cried, we begged, we screamed. We drowned out any conversation my aunts were having about tea or basket weaving. Our pleas fell on deaf ears. To take a reptile out into the woods and kill it with a shovel was unorthodox, to say the least. Needless to say, his reasoning never really convinced my brother and I that it was something “any normal guy would do if faced with the situation.” But we were powerless. A ten minute drive back to our house was too long. We would never make it back in time to stop the massacre.

It must have been something in the air that fateful Mother’s Day. My father never killed that old iguana with a shovel. He shot him.