Farewell to an officemate

The arkadelphian.com headquarters has been much quieter the past few days in the absence of a longtime officemate. Apart from the near-constant clacks of our laptop, the occasional text notification, or the squeak our chair makes when we lean, the office is deathly silent now that she’s gone.

For the past several years she greeted us at the door: a sudden turn of the head to set her cold gaze upon us, followed by a series of annoyed nods. Sometimes we’d return the favor and stare back at her, bobbing our head in an exaggerated manner, then take our seat at the computer and type away, our back to her for most of the working hours. 

Zori seemed to make constant noise. Usually it was the resonance of cage bars as she clambered hither and yon, her sharp claws causing a “ting” with every move. At lunchtime, she could be heard munching away at her salad of greens and peppers. If she wasn’t basking or napping, she was shuffling somewhere.

You’d think an iguana wasn’t capable of making so much racket.

Most of the time, she was hard to love. It seemed to us that Zori purposely dialed up the clamor when we were conducting a phone interview for an important story or hearing a juicy news tip. Oftentimes she would charge at us as we walked past her cage on the way out the door, sometimes startling us and prompting an audible gasp, sometimes annoying us to the point we’d taunt her. Still, it was never a dull moment with that lizard.

We noticed a few weeks ago that Zori wasn’t making as much noise. She looked thinner. Her brilliant turquoise scales had become pale. The head-bobbing and charging came to a halt. Something was wrong. She was sick.

She had little fight in her one sunny day last weekend, when we took her outside to bask on the deck. Not once during that hour did she attempt to leap to freedom. Not once did she whip her tail at Ozzy the Chocolate Chihuahua, though once or twice his proximity gave her reason to. Zori finally seemed at peace.

Two days later, we walked into an eerily quiet office to find Zori had perished. No more cage climbing, no more salad chomping. Now that she’s gone, we sure miss the noise.

Last summer we wrote a humor piece about Zori, but for one reason or another it never saw daylight. We shared the essay with our father, who was sick with cancer that would claim his life in less than a month. It was the last of our writings that he would read. He chuckled a few times while reading it, and confirmed at its conclusion that it was comical. He found the title most humorous. We suppose that now the time is right to publish that piece in its original, unedited form.

Living with a reptile dysfunction

One of the many benefits of working from home is that you get to see your pets. 

Except when one of those pets hates your guts.

During the pandemic, Yours Truly had the bright idea to buy The Spouse an iguana for Mother’s Day. Before we met, she had taken in an owner-surrendered iguana — a reptile she and her family often fondly recount as a gentle lizard that enjoyed taking walks on a leash and eating slices of bananas right from their hands. To my chagrin (five years later), I couldn’t think of anything better to get her for Mother’s Day.

I took great measures to keep the 2020 Mother’s Day gift a surprise, making secret calls to a Central Arkansas pet store to order the thing well ahead of its purchase, and buying all the gizmos associated with owning a subtropical pet.

Zori, as she would later be named, came to us as a cute and tiny thing, no bigger than a common anole found in Arkansas. Over the next several months, as she grew and spikes began emerging from her spine, we had to buy a new terrarium. Then another. She now measures nearly 3 feet from head to tail. Ultimately, her domicile became a 24-cubic-foot cage furnished with climbing vines and offering enough space for her to chow down on greens and berries, bask beneath her heated lamps, and to do her “business” (cue that mob boss scene from Robin Hood: Men in Tights). 

Shortly after The Arkadelphian was born, The Spouse had the bright idea to move Zori’s cage into my office. It was all fine for a while, as I would sometimes let her out to bask on a windowsill as I typed away at the latest article. Then something hateful clicked inside her reptilian brain, and for the last year or so she’s been plotting to kill me. I can say with confidence my claim isn’t hyperbolic. Often, when I walk by the cage, she charges at me with enough force that she sometimes draws blood as her face rams the bars. She has leapt at me from her perch — jaws agape with fury, her cold yellow eyes fixed on my face (or is it my throat?).

I’m horrified of this beast to the point that I now refuse to open the cage door wide enough to insert a medley of veggies and fruit, leaving that chore up to The Spouse. Last time I opened the door to feed, she charged at me wildly (the lizard, not The Spouse), giving me only a split second to slam the thing shut as I let out an audible little-girl screech, my heart racing. No more of that — I refuse to allow my manner of death to be an iguana slashing my throat with a hundred serrated, crystalline-like denticles.

Yet The Spouse, who gets along just fine with the lizard, refuses to allow her relocation to, say, the basement or her own craft room. She remains adamant that Zori is only bluffing me, that she really just wants my affection — nay, I say; she really wants my blood.

The real tail whip to the face is that, in my failing to research a pet before committing to ownership, The Spouse informed me that iguanas can live to be 25 years old. We’ve had this (expletive) thing for five (expletive) years now. (Insert the That 70s Show scene where Red Foreman, upon taking in Hyde, back to the camera, shouts a string of skyward, bleeped expletives.) 

Zori is creating a toxic work environment, but I’m not beyond going tit for tat with a lizard. Methinks it’s high time the office TV is turned to a loop of YouTube videos devoted to hunting wild iguanas in Florida.

One thing is certain: Next year, Momma’s getting a vacuum cleaner for Mother’s Day — perhaps one that will last a quarter century.

Joel Phelps is publisher and editor of arkadelphian.com. Contact him by email at editor@arkadelphian.com.