MeXscape

Well...Snickers the Wonder Dog actually managed to catch a rather large Iguana today. We were on our afternoon bicycle ride, I on the bike and Snickers following along behind; she doesn’t have her own bike yet. I am not sure how she managed to corner and capture the damn thing, but it was (and still is), about one meter long. When I realized she was not right next to me or even close behind me, I stopped and looked back to see her in the lizard hunting mode, about 50 meters away. Ever since her first sudden encounter with these long and muscular lizards, they have captured her attention. Several of the local little dinos have decided that Sinckers’ outside water bowl was fair game, just as long as she was either not close about or inside at night. So every morning there are lizard turds around the water bowl and it is bone dry. I don’t mind these various colored reptiles taking advantage of an easily accessible water source, but the copious quantities of scat left behind is a bit much. I know, by size and quantity of scat, that there are more than 2 or 3 of these creatures involved in the water caper. Snickers, of course, believes that the entire lizard world is coming in the dark of night to soil her territory and steal her water. I mean, after all her brain is smaller than a baseball and these intruders have positioned an obvious challenge right below her black nose and her little brown eyes. And after spending many mornings cleaning up the after hours deposits, I have tended to agree with her.

So as I looked back and saw all her hair standing on end, her head down and her slow and careful stalk, I knew she had something backed into a corner. I stood on the peddles of my bike and raced back to try and save what ever she had in her sights. When I finally arrived on the site of the hunt, Snickers had a 10 pound lizard trapped in an inside corner of a stone and concrete wall and was ready to pounce. The red and brown Iguana had all of its spinal spikes fully extended and was emitting a deep and guttural hiss, meant to strike fear into the heart of the occasional predator. Snickers seemed cautious but certainly unafraid, the source of months of frustration easily within her grasp.

I certainly had no time to try to tell her that this particular lizard was not part of our local pack of primitive poopers, so I dropped the bike and ran for the Iguana while shouting NO! Snickers went for the little dinosaur at the same time as I made my move.

There were several Mexican construction workers, waiting for a bus, about 15 meters from this evolving scene and all seemed quite amused by the old gringo trying to rescue this plump, indigenous food source. Needless to say Snickers beat me to the hissing reptile by about 2 meters. She quickly grabbed it about the middle and was about to shake it violently when I tackled her; both Snickers and the Iguana were stunned by the sudden collision. The force of the impact caused Snickers to literally spit the lizard back into the corner of the wall. At this point a communal gasp arose from the waiting construction workers, a loud yip from Snickers, a sigh of relief from the freed reptile and a groan from the old dude. After placing myself between the dog and the dinosaur, I checked both for any obvious damage. Snickers seemed to be suffering from only confusion and a few bruised ribs, the Iguana saw the opportunity for escape and took off at high speed; undamaged. I would have never thought that my Wonder Dog would actually go after such a large lizard. However after several months of watching these things slither around, just out of reach in the branches of the trees, the temptation was just too much to bear.