| Stuff About Elmo |
|---|
| IGUANA INFORMATION (Food, habitat, heat, etc.) |
| I don't know where he came from. He might have escaped from a cage. He might be the son of an escaped iguana. He may have flown in from a rainforest. He might be an alien in disguise! He looked healthy except for a few scraped places on his back and a crooked toe. His toe is fine now. He must still think that we will get really hungry one day and just eat him because he tries to scare us away every once in a while. |
| When he was small I kept him in a glass terrarium. He was sure there was a way out of his cage. He climbed under the towel on the bottom. It was funny to watch. He went in upside down and pulled himself along. He traveled under his food dish (a lightweight, plastic cat dish) and under his hiding place (a cardboard box with no bottom and a door cut out of the side) and popped up on the other side! I wonder what he thought when he found himself still in the cage. Maybe he thought he was in a different cage altogether! |
| My dad made a new habitat out of a free standing cupboard we bought at the hardware store. He put glass windows in it and cut out holes to make it all one area. I will have to redo it as Elmo is a lot bigger. I am now letting him out to climb around my bedroom. The bad thing is he keeps climbing up my shelves and my bulletin board. I have to iguana-proof my entire room from floor to ceiling. Actually, maybe I can put everything he shouldn't touch on the floor. He likes to jump from my desk to my bed to my shelves. |
| When you are furnishing a new iguana home be sure to check out the light fixtures at a HARDWARE STORE before you buy them at a pet shop. The UVB and heat lamps I bought at the pet store, but the fixtures to hold the bulbs I bought at a large hardware store. They may not look as beautiful as the ones at the pet store, but who cares? I saved $70.00! What I need to find out now is if the UV plant lights are the same as the reptile lights. They sure are a lot cheaper! |
| I have thermometers in all corners of Elmo's home so I can make sure none of the areas are too hot or too cold. I have one thermometer between the heat lamp and the closest Elmo can get to the lamp to make sure it doesn't cook him. Warm is nice and healthy, cooked is dead. Ya know what I mean? |
| I have a picture of Elmo's home here. I have a description of the details on that page as well as information on food and lots of other things. |
| He is growing a lot. He sheds his skin when he gets too big for it, just like a snake does. He shed his skin twice in one week. I guess he is getting the foods he needs. We give him orange squash, lots of different kinds of greens that have vitamins A and C in them (no iceberg lettuce), carrots, and other vegetables that are in season, and I sprinkle powdered vitamins over it. I give him fresh food every morning. He is eating more and more. He looks healthy and is probably 20 times bigger than he was when I got him so I must be doing something right. Some of the iguana sites I found were very helpful on what foods he can and can't eat. Also, they told me what houseplants can hurt him. |
| I printed a lot of the best information I found on the internet and put it all in a notebook. My mom indexed it for me so I can look things up when I need to. There is a lot of stuff out there. Check out the sites I have listed. |
IGUANA INFORMATION
