Bright Green Visitor

The other day I glanced outside to see whether the cat food bowl was empty and was arrested by the sight of a blurry green lump next to it. What is that?



Do iguanas eat cat food? Snails like it. Hermit crabs like it. I guess maybe iguanas do too?

As soon as I stepped away, this iguana scrambled to the other end of the terrace, which is dug into the hill at the back of our house, and difficult to get out of if you are as small as an iguana is. I did not follow him except with the zoom lens of my camera, but my presence and the fact that he could not jump out of the terraced area easily made him hostile, and he hunched his back, bobbed his head aggressively and showed me the flap under his chin.

He is mid head bob here.

I propped a board up against the wall so he could use it to escape and got out of there.

A while later I stuck my head out to see if the iguana had made it out and was confronted by this sight:



At first I only saw the cat and mistook the iguana for a plant. I wonder if the cat even knew he was there?





Eventually the cat left to dig some unfortunate creature out of the rocks in the hillside, and I waited to see if the iguana would leave. He dropped his mouth open and I wondered if iguanas use their tongues to get scents the way cats and dogs do? Or perhaps he would eat some leaves?



Eventually I realized it could be that he was too hot in the sun, but would not move because he could see me watching him. I ducked inside, and when I looked again he was gone. I hope he was okay. I was shaken by the idea that I could have harmed him by scaring him into not moving. I'll have to be more careful.



As much as I enjoyed seeing this iguana, I am not happy about the possibility of a confrontation between something this size and one of my dogs or the cats that hang around nearby. The cats seem pretty wary of everything, but my dogs are stupid enough to get too close. I wouldn't want them or the iguana hurt by such an encounter.