LVA's Web-Content Manager Jessica Roe responds:
Mojo was originally a Christmas gift given to Anthony Curtis' son by me when he (son) was about eight years old and particularly into lizards. At that point, Mojo was just a tiny baby –- about 6-8 inches long (able to perch on my thumb/lapel/head for extended periods of time quite happily).
All was well for the first six months or so, until I had to leave town for a number of months and, due to poor advice from the pet store, Mojo suffered what is sadly an all-too-common problem in captive green iguanas, namely metabolic bone disease. This stems from insufficient exposure to UVA/UVB light, which leads to a vitamin D3 deficiency, which in turn means the iguana is unable to absorb calcium and the bones become weak and brittle -- much like rickets in humans. In the sad case of little Mojo, this resulted in a broken arm and a number of repercussions and future health issues.
Still, (what quickly reverted to being) my green iguana made good recovery once the problem had been identified and rectified and for the past several years Mojo has shared my office, in a palatial custom-built habitat where I take care of my office-mate's day-to-day environmental, dietary, and other needs (iguana's are much more tactile and cuddlicious than any non-iguana owner could imagine). Mojo, who is quite capable of opening the door to this habitat at will, is a sociable sort who often slips out to visit with people in the research and IT departments (sometimes venturing as far afield as customer service). When bored, Mojo generally comes home voluntarily, although sometimes needs to be captured and returned by hand.
While generally a pretty perky out-and-about sort of iguana these days, earlier health issues meant that it took Moj much longer than the norm to reach sexual maturity and, having been assured that he was a male, it took awhile for the reality of the situation to become apparent...
It all started late last summer, when I was out of town for a long weekend and left Mojo in the care of a girlfriend of mine. I left little packed lunches of prepared food (mustard and collard greens, some yellow squash, etc.) in the office refrigerator, plus a hard-boiled egg as a special treat (eggs are not especially good for iguanas, but it's a favorite delicacy of the Moj's, who's occasionally indulged).
During the course of a phone call to said friend, somehow the subject of the egg came up.
"Ha! I nearly left a note telling you to take it out of the shell," I joked.
"Ugghh! I was meant to take it out of the shell? Yikes. I thought I'd feed it to Moj just like it would be in the wild," she responded.
"Are you kidding me? How many hard-boiled eggs do you think the average iguana gets to eat in the wild?!"
Still, upon my return, all seemed to be well, so I didn't think too much more of it until Mojo had a routine check-up with Las Vegas' only "exotic" veterinarian very shortly thereafer. Everything was okay, aside from the results of a blood test that indicated extremely elevated calcium levels. The vet suggested that this might be attributable to the onset of egg production, but as we were pretty sure that Mojo was a male, at the time we dismissed the idea. My thoughts returned to the hard-boiled-egg incident and I figured the fact that he'd eaten an entire egg, shell and all, might well have something to do with the calcium situation. (Still, I called my friend: "When I left Mojo he was definitely a boy. And now he's sexually ambiguous. What did you do to him?!" I heard her husband laugh, knowingly, in the background.)
Another few weeks went by and I noticed that strangely Mojo's appetite was decreasing while his belly seemed to be somewhat bloated. So, with some foreboding, I loaded him up and made yet another visit to the vet. The lovely Dr Kolmstetter took my Moj off to the X-ray room and our worst fears were immediately confirmed: "He" was definitely a "she" -- a she full of eggs!
Like birds, female reptiles produce eggs whether or not there's a male around -- if there isn't, as was the case in this instance, then they're not fertilized and there would be no chance of little Mojos running around. What the X-ray revealed was that there were complications which, in the wild, would have resulted in death. Fortunately, it was nothing that a C-section couldn't rectify and, to make sure it never happened again, a hysterectomy was performed. The bill? $1,1000. Saving Mojo's life: Priceless!
