PRESS-ENTERPRISE (Riverside, California) 29 October 06 Pet iguanas complicate his search for place to rent (Sarah Burge)
Riverside: Joe Allen knew he had a problem when his landlady told him that he and his 15 pet iguanas would have to find a new home.
The Bartlett Avenue house in Riverside where Allen, 53, has lived for more than 10 years is being sold and probably will be torn down to make way for a commercial building, Allen said. The landlady declined to be interviewed, but Allen said he is supposed to be out by mid-November.
So for the past five months, Allen has been searching in earnest for a rental property owner willing to open his arms to a giant lizard menagerie.
He even took out a classified ad: "NEED INEXPENSIVE PLACE TO LIVE!! Which has large cement or blacktop area to place enclosures for large iguanas."
He didn't get many responses.
The enclosures are enormous, and they fill his yard, front and back. They look, more or less, like 4-foot-tall, above-ground swimming pools. Inside the enclosures are heated iguana dens made from a hodgepodge of materials, surrounded by hibiscus plants, mini-waterfalls and ramps on which the reptiles can scamper.
Rumpelstiltskin -- an orange and green iguana about the size of a dachshund -- has his own bedroom in the house. He also has free access, via doggie door, to an iguana sun porch.
To say that Allen likes iguanas would be an understatement. Allen earns his living as a mover, but the iguanas are his life.
Before he started collecting iguanas, Allen said, he never really had any pets. His hobbies ran more toward electronics and building things.
Since he got his first two iguanas in 1994, a gift from a friend, he has become iguana obsessed. He also became a vegetarian and joined People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
He prepares his pets daily meals of mashed yams and greens, garnished with a few bits of apple, and each iguana has its own automatic-shut-off heat lamp. When he was building enclosures, Allen said, he was probably spending $5,000 a year on his iguanas. Lately, he's cut back to about $2,000 a year. At one point, Allen had 24 iguanas, although many of them were hatchlings.
Allen has been chased by iguanas -- mouths open, tails flapping -- and he has been clawed. About three years ago, an iguana named Shadrac took a flying leap at him and bit his face.
"It was on a Thanksgiving Day, just after I'd taken him his Thanksgiving dinner," he said. "The next day he acted like he had no clue what had happened."
Allen said he had to get 25 stitches, but he forgave the iguana.
"I like all of them," he said. "Even the ornery ones."
His mother has been trying to persuade him to give up his iguanas for years, Allen said, even threatening to cut him out of her will if he didn't give in. He said she dislikes the iguanas so intensely that she hasn't been to his house since 2001.
"She called me up and asked, 'Who do you love more? Me or the iguanas?' "
He loves his mother, Allen said, but he can't live without his iguanas.
"She used to have pet pigeons," he said. "She had about 15 pigeons. And I never said anything about it."
Faced with the prospect of losing his home, however, Allen has been forced to give away several iguanas. At last count, he was down to eight.
He thinks he may have found a landlord who will allow the lizards, but he's going to have to scale back the enclosures at least by half.
It's very depressing, Allen said, "but I'm getting over it."
But, he added, "I wouldn't do myself in and leave the iguanas to fend for themselves."
Pet iguanas complicate his search for place to rent