Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 26, 1990 TAG: 9007260008
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: JUSTINE ELIAS/ SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
"She is harmless," read signs posted around town. "She loves to eat yellow squash and I really want her back."
She is 2 1/2 feet long, including her tail, with a large bump on her nose.
"She" is an iguana.
McCrickard, who owns an assortment of exotic pets, noticed that the lizard, called Stink, was missing.
"We tore the room apart all afternoon. Then we searched the neighborhood and put up signs," said McCrickard. Stink reappeared one morning recently, lying on a windowsill.
"Yes, she's found," said McCrickard.
"I'm not really sure if it got out of the apartment at all," said Sabina Keller, McCrickard's roommate. "There was a hole in the screen, but she could have been in the room the entire time."
"She's like a poem to me," McCrickard said. "People don't understand how you can feel about an iguana. But I do.
"She's very sweet, but I don't credit her with enough brains to find her way back home if she had escaped," said McCrickard, who thinks that the lizard may have hidden somewhere in the apartment over the weekend.
"I bought her from a guy here in Blacksburg who decided he didn't have time for her anymore," said McCrickard. Stink's previous owner called her Sting, but McCrickard didn't like the name. "I've had her 18 months. She's mine for good."
Iguanas are indigenous to South and Central America, and they grow up to six feet long.
"A girl in town has a male iguana that's five feet long," McCrickard said. "It's very aggressive. It's blind in one eye because it attacked a lawnmower.
"Stink's quite tame. But she doesn't like to be held."
McCrickard and Keller report that Stink and their two cats are kept in separate rooms. "I wouldn't like to see what happens if they met," he said.
by CNB