Anyway, I always walk my dogs the same way – around to the park, a loop back to the walking trail, cut across the school yard and down the road to my house. Well, today, I guess I was earlier than usual or school got out late? It’s almost four and the children were still there!!!

I didn’t realize until I had already cut across a rather large field and my normal exit was locked!! OH NO.

I had to head straight for a playground full of elementary kids. With an iguana.

Within about 20 seconds I had a little crowd chanting “iguana! iguana!”. I was mortified. I was kind of having a little panic attack looking for the closest unlocked exit. They chain these kids in pretty good!!! Every gate was chained!!!

Finally I was able to get to a door, go through a hall and out to freedom. Phew.

Petrie handled himself very well. He had one little freak out moment, made a little girl cry just watching him squirm in my hand but hopefully she’ll be alright. Her parents should look up igs and realize they’re vegetarians, not snakes. :/.

So glad to be home! So is Petrie, he’s hanging out on the curtains now and taking a breather… sitting on a shoulder is hard work!

One of his favorite spots, on top of the curtains

Petrie usually only really enjoys the sunshine on the kitchen table for a few minutes, then he starts his never-ending journey to the top of the world…

Well, at least to the top of the curtains! Even though it’s probably not as warm and cozy up there, and he sometimes has a really hard time walking across the top when the curtains are open… he still really likes being able to literally look down on us all.

Look how big he’s gotten! We need to get a new measurement of him so we can post on his growth chart! Our big special boy!

We are also getting ready for another move! Jeesh! But hopefully this place will be much more long-term, and Petrie will have his own room . Well, he will be sharing it with the computer, but for the most part it will be his room .

But Petrie is doing really well! We need to measure him again soon. He seems to really love his new big cage, and pretty colors too! He’s still hogging down on his collards and watercress and kidney beans – they seem to be the only things he’ll eat. He even turns away mango! Stinker!

Finally, he is making a turn for the better personality wise. We’ve been really religious about Petrie Time every day and he loves getting scratched!

More pics and updates soon, King Petrie wishes you all a good night!

He’s all settled into the new cage, but he is still pissed. He just doesn’t do well with change. Thankfully, he really explores this new cage! We left the bottom shelf (we thought) closed off, to kind of use as a temporary storage unit. However, King Petrie is not satisfied with sharing his domain, and crawled down there in the gap between the second shelf and the door last night to sleep. So now we need to move all the stored clutter down there to a different spot and get him a nice sleeping area set up.

Petrie's New Cage

Don't mess with my froggy!

Well, I was cruizing wikipedia today and thought I’d search for green iguana, to see what they had to say about them, and I thought this was pretty interesting…

Juveniles stay in familial groups for the first year of their lives.^[21] Male Green iguanas in these groups often use their own bodies to shield and protect females from predators and it appears to be the only species of reptile which does this.^[22]

This seems to be describing exactly what Petrie would do to protect Ducky, so it makes us wonder even more – is Petrie a he? He certainly looks like it!

Thankfully I picked up some wood sealer today for the chicken coop, but it looks like instead we’ll be using it on Petrie’s cage to seal it. We didn’t seal the last one because we were too impatient to get our iggy, and we knew that the cage wouldn’t last long anyway because of size.

Petrie sends his love to all his followers… in the form of a stink eye!!

We stayed last week, making sure he was settled in and getting used to his habitat. He seems to be doing great.

Without his humidifyers here, his humidity drops to around 10-15% within a day. Guess what the natural humidity there is?!?! Guess!!! 50% the first day, up to 70% the third day after it had rained the evening before! Petrie is in Heaven!

We miss him already, and it’s only been two days! But I know he’ll be well cared for and it would be much less stressful for him there while we’re packing everything. We will be camping for almost a month, then getting settled into our new place, so it may be some time before reliable internet access is available.

To all of King Petrie’s fans, he’s doing great, and we’ll try to keep you posted with some more pictures as soon as possible!

PS.. My mom’s room is full of beautiful plants, so now King Petrie is REALLY in the jungle!