“Buy-back is not our policy,” says pet store manager.

A woman in Julian, California has sued an Arizona pet shop, claiming that the pet iguana it sold her was “retarded.”

“I could see something was wrong as soon as I got it home,” said 83-year-old Rosetta McGloyne, who has lived in this mountain community all her life. The animal’s eyes were spinning around, and it refused to do any of the lizard tricks Mrs. McGloyne had watched on YouTube.

SuperPets of Yuma, Arizona says it sold the $29.00 animal with no guarantee, and claims Mrs. McGloyne should have learned a little more about lizards before buying the reptile.

“We never said it was a trick iguana,” said Moe DeChiese, manager of SuperPets. “We never said it was an iguana at all. She bought it out of our Generic Lizard tank.”

When asked if he had offered to buy back the lizard, Mr. DeChiese said no. “Buy-back is not the policy of SuperPets.”

Mrs. McGloyne has filed suit for $100,000 against SuperPets for “mental cruelty.”

Healthy iguanas have an alert disposition.

Richard Dawson, popular actor, iguana fancier, science writer, and chat-show guest, says he’s had a change of heart on the “God” question.

Having proclaimed his atheism for many decades, with the foot-stomping obstinacy of Augustus-who-would-not-eat-his-soup, Dawson now says he may have been wrong.

“I don’t consider myself an atheist anymore, quite,” he says. “Maybe I’m an agnostic, because that leaves me open to error, innit?”

Dawson says he’s currently living in a caravan near Wigan Pier and working on screenplay proposal. “But I still hear from my agent every day.”

South Florida gator dealer has long used iguanas as food for his friendly crocodilians. But now he says he’s found even better uses:

Brian Wood, owner of All American Gator, an alligator-processing and iguana-trapping company in Hollywood, is avidly searching for a market for his trapped iguanas. Wood said he captures more than a thousand of the creatures a month.

“I feel bad just killing them and wasting it, so I started keeping them,” he said.

Now, more than a thousand of the lizards live on his iguana farm in LaBelle, in Hendry County. Because he captures so many, Wood said he feeds some to his alligators and turns others into wallets.

“With the number of iguanas I catch, I could make a fortune off selling them if I could find a market,” Wood said. “When I first started selling alligator, people asked, ‘Who would eat alligator?’ Now, I sell 80,000 pounds of it a year.”

Whole story here!

There is really nothing unusual about using iguanas as a foodstuff, say folks familiar with the reptile. Many savages and other animals have eaten them for generations. 

From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

While many people view South Florida’s invasive iguana population as an annoyance at best and a pandemic at worst, Ishmeal Asson sees something else: lunch.

The Fort Lauderdale resident and native Trinidadian considers eating iguanas to be a way of life. Growing up, Asson learned to roast the island critters at roadside and backyard gatherings. Iguana is a staple in the Caribbean, where the reptiles are a native species and are known as “pollo de los árboles,” or chicken of the trees. Their meat contains more protein than chicken, and members of some cultures believe it has medicinal properties.

In South Florida, Asson is hardly alone in his taste for cooked iguana. He has more than a dozen friends who eat the animal, and they frequently hunt them using nets, snares and traps. “We are having a cookout this weekend,” he said earlier this week.

Full article is here.

As winter arrives, we are bound to see a flurry of new iguana recipes and news reports about the popularity of iguana barbecues in Florida!

Why, just recently, this turned up in a south Florida journal of doubtful significance:

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — While many people view South Florida’s invasive iguana population as an annoyance at best and a pandemic at worst, Ishmeal Asson sees something else: lunch.

The Fort Lauderdale resident and native Trinidadian considers eating iguanas to be a way of life. Growing up, Asson learned to roast the island critters at roadside and backyard gatherings. Iguana is a staple in the Caribbean, where the reptiles are a native species and are known as “pollo de los árboles,” or chicken of the trees. Their meat contains more protein than chicken, and members of some cultures believe it has medicinal properties.

The rest of the story may be found here. It’s longer and more informative than most. And toward the end you even get something resembling a recipe:

“You just have to try it, though,” said Brittany Peters, who during a recent trip to South Florida made an iguana-inspired meal for the first time.

With no experience cooking the beasties, Peters went with a simpler route than roasting the meat over an open flame — she made burritos. Peters shot two green iguanas in the Keys, then skinned, boiled and sauteed the meat at her relatives’ home in Fort Lauderdale.

She boiled the skinned body for about an hour, then picked off the tender meat. She added a chili-lime seasoning from Trader Joe’s before sauteing it with onions.

Peters paired the white meat with sour cream, cilantro, avocado and lime for a “delicious” reptile burrito.

(A note of caution to veteran and would-be iguana eaters: Although it is illegal to do so, nuisance iguanas are occasionally poisoned. Before biting into iguana meat, make sure it does not contain any poisons or other harmful substances.)