An appeal from the author Why you should become a Salon member. By Anne Lamott

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T A B L E++T A L K

"Teletubbies": Mind control for babies? Swap paranoid theories about TV's weirdest children's show in the Mothers area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Is one enough?
By Vivienne Walt
Will China's generation without siblings break away from the one-child rule?
(11/11/98)

Time For One Thing: Anxiety
By Jennifer Moses
Anxiety: That persistent, gnawing sense that something, somewhere, is not quite right actually serves a purpose -- it gets me out of bed
(11/10/98)

The last campaign
By Erin Aubry
My father was the kind of upright politician who did thankless, largely unquantifiable good works. Unfortunately, the electorate didn't give a damn
(11/09/98)

Why can't a woman be more like a chair?
By Debra S. Ollivier
Fashions inspired by Cyber Amazons, mental-ward escapees and furniture are all the rage in Paris this spring
(11/06/98)

Should a boy be expelled for thought crimes?
By Sallie Tisdale
Students used to have to commit violence to get kicked out of school. Now they just have to write about it
(11/05/98)

BROWSE THE WORD BY WORD ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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Salon Columnists

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How my son's pet reptile taught me to love all sentient beings -- and Republicans too.
___[_W O R D__B Y__W O R D_]

BY ANNE LAMOTT | My son has had a freelance big brother named Brian for nine years now. Brian had a nearly perfect track record over the years. He always showed up on time, he took Sam places, swung him on swings, took him camping every summer, comforted him when there were losses. And then, last Christmas, Brian came by with Sam's Christmas surprise.

And what a surprise it was.

It was an iguana in a long glass cage, a young male of about 6 months. It was going to grow to be three or four feet long, so Sam named him Barry, after Barry Bonds, since it was going to be a Giant. Brian and Sam made a framed mesh top for the cage, with an opening lined in tin foil into which you could insert a heat lamp without having to worry about the wooden frame catching fire. And they got him a collar and leash with a tiny dog tag that had Barry's name and Sam's phone number. Iguanas like to go for walks on leashes. How fun!

I am afraid of most reptiles, and did not want this iguana. Iguanas can carry salmonella, and besides, I do not consider reptiles pets. You show me someone on the street with a boa coiled around his or her neck, and I'll show you a very angry person. I announced that as far as Barry went, I did not exist except that I would pay for food, and be extremely bitter about having to do so.

I heard moral, zoological righteousness in my voice, and it was disgusting to me. I sounded like Bay Buchanan. So I called a priest.

"Do you think God cares about iguanas? That they go to heaven?" "God cares about all creatures," he said. "I think almost everyone goes to heaven. This includes pets, and generous Republicans."

When I got off the phone, I went and sat next to Barry's cage. He was, as usual, motionless, but I wasn't thinking about iguanas. I found myself thinking about Republicans. God, I thought, even my priest friends dislike them. We vote for Democrats because we think the right wing would turn the USA into fascist Germany. And some of us voice these tiny opinions; spew them, my detractors might say. But I have just enough spiritual savvy to know that since I am sowing poison and judgment, I will reap more of the same; and that also, you can't help save the world if you're a bigot. Dr. King loved segregationists, even if he didn't love their actions. He loved them because Jesus said to, and he sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." I want what Dr. King had, and what Jesus had -- a loving heart -- but I sing the national anthem from "The 2000 Year Old Man": "Let them all go to hell, except Cave 76."

So I decided, right then and there and almost as a joke, to practice love and tolerance on Barry. I was given ample opportunities. Half the time when Sam left for school, I noticed that he'd forgotten to turn Barry's heat light on. Also, that Barry, who may clinically be an idiot, had often dragged his bedding into the water dish, so the water ended up looking like pea soup with topsoil stirred in. I would do the kind thing -- turn on his heat lamp and give him fresh water -- but with enormous fear and annoyance.

People came to admire him. Oh, he's so beautiful, they would exclaim with delight, even though he mostly does not move or respond, except to have these terrible episodes from time to time where he tears around his cage like a balloon losing air. Everyone was always saying that he was like a little dragon, a little memento of prehistory, but to me, he was like an elegant and vaguely hostile scrap of leather. He was so alien. He didn't cuddle, he didn't schmooze, he didn't respond. Mostly he just stared. Whenever Sam would cry out, "Oh, Barry, you are such a good iguana," I'd warm up to him a little. I'd sit on a chair next to his cage and practice feeling like Jesus. Sometimes I would sing him songs from the Who's rock opera "Tommy": "Barry, can you hear me? Can you feel me near you?" There'd be no response, not even a blink, and then suddenly, he'd flip out and have an episode, tear around the cage scaring me half to death, bolting from one end of the cage to the other, crashing around for a minute spewing streamers of shit everywhere, until all the phantoms in his brain were exorcised. Then he'd stare some more. I tell you, a guy like that can give you the creeps.

One day after a terrible episode, Sam came in to burrow up against me. He had studied Barry for a long time afterwards. I sat with him in silence. "I'm very worried about Barry," he said after a while. "I think he may have done something to his mind."

In between bouts, Barry was as basic as it gets: stare stare, lie on hot rock, stare, sneak to other end of cage, stare. You'd rarely see him eat, or drink water, or move. It was like a constant game of Red Light, Green Light. I wondered if he might be a spy, be wearing a Linda Tripp rig, recording our every word. Comedian Michael Pritchard once said that he thought people with Down's syndrome were spies for God, and I wondered if Barry might be one, too. I could not see one redeeming quality. Maybe I just prefer pets who suck up to you -- our dog, for instance, who's like a concerned nurse in a black fur suit. But the best you could say for Barry was that he was wild to look at, all ridges, scales, bright eyes. Sometimes he was sort of funny, what with the episodes, and this odd Jurassic scream posture he adopted sometimes, when he threw back his head and roared, Edvard Munch-like, in silence. Of course I noticed that he elicited care and tenderness from my young boy, but by that token, so does Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is a staunch you-know-what.

Finally, one morning when Sam had spent the night at my brother's, I went in to plug in Barry's heat lamp. But he looked even stiller than usual. He looked dead. But I wasn't positive, so I lifted the lid off his cage to nudge him, and then realized I was too afraid to do so.

N E X T_ P A G E: A vet's first iguana examination