The Great White Hunter

I know everyone likes stories about my mother. Except, possibly my mother. So I've been saving this one up. You may remember her adventures as Head Counselor of Crabby Fun Land. This is a yearly summer ritual for her.

At some point after I left last Summer, she decided to expand the Fun Land by adding iguanas. The Iguana's are huge, and roam all over the island. They act a lot like prehistoric chickens. They seem to really enjoy fruit. My parents have a guava tree in their front yard, which the iguanas pilfer. My mother invariably names these fruit pirates either "Iggy" or "Lizzie". (Iggies being the iguana menfolk and lizzies are the ladies).

As the iguana are faster and more mobile than the hermit crabs, they required slightly more inducement to join the Fun Land. So my mother devised a fool proof trap (Photos courtesy of my father):

In case this needs more explanation, it is a trail of guava from the parking lot, into my parents front yard. I am relatively sure that she got the idea from a Looney Toons episode. The theory is sound. You know how this works: 

And because cartoon never lie to us, it seems that my mothers fruit actually... well... bore fruit. Lacking the advice of an Admiral Ackbar, the more reckless of the Lizzies made her way into Fun Land. 

Sadly, containment seemed to be a bit of an issue. The fence around the yard is far from iguana proof, and they don't fit in a tub. They also don't seem to sit still for nail polish painting. My mother addressed these issues when they visited over Christmas. The trap was reinstated, and she decided that the iguanas just needed training. She embarked on a campaign to make them learn tricks, which apparently involved using any leftover fruit food waste from the kitchen.

I can't say for certain that this was successful, my mother insists that they were learning tricks. I suspect the tricks were along the lines of "sit!" "look lizardy!" and "run away!".  She has had several months to come up with additional iguana curriculum though, so I expect they will be whipped into shape in no time this summer.