LONDON FREE PRESS (Ontario) 21 June 08 Living large with lizards (Herman Goodden)
We were standing around in the kitchen nursing cups of morning coffee and planning last Sunday's expedition to Boston when a strange skittering sound on the flagstone floor of the front hall grew louder and louder.
"Lizards coming through," announced our host, backing up against the cupboard to give leeway to the reptilian parade that was coming our way. Taking our cues from her, we smartly did likewise as two large iguanas -- about as hefty as Queen Elizabeth's corgis though shorter of leg and considerably longer of tail -- went prowling past us at a vigorous clip and disappeared into the dining room.
"Love is in the air," A.J. sagely announced and within less than a minute she was proven right on that forecast, too. The woman knows her lizards. With her digital camera, my daughter Emily documented the decidedly brusque tryst that ensued, a clip of which may someday get worked into one of her art projects or perhaps will just be consigned to her treasure chest of touristic souvenirs.
This was Emily's first trip to A.J. Gutman's iguana sanctuary in Hartford, Conn. For son Hugh and I this was our third visit in as many years. Hartford makes an excellent base camp for foraging raids on the book and music shops of New York City and Boston.
The environment has become relatively normalized for us, so it was fun to watch Em react to the uniqueness of this palatial home where A.J. has raised her two sons and taken care of abandoned and injured reptiles.
She estimated the non-human population under her roof at 75 -- half of them iguanas of various sizes. That number is fairly constant. As the older beasts die off, new ones are brought to her to care for. Within that highly specialized field (which has its own popular and scholarly journals and conferences), A.J. is very well known.
The reptiles are pretty well confined to the first floor -- which is why I make a point of sleeping on the third. Many of the smaller ones are housed in aquarium-style tanks. The larger iguanas have the run of the joint, but spend most of their time basking under sunlamps set up on wooden decks in the dining room and living room.
Except for the odd burst of procreative activity, they're remarkably docile creatures. If you're a stranger or approach too quickly, they'll rear back their heads in a bobbing motion and stretch the corners of their mouths in a grimace like Somerset Maugham getting ready to shave the underside of his chin. But this is just their way of saying, "Slow down, Bub. Give me a chance to get acquainted."
Unlikely as it may seem at the time of that first queasy encounter, by day two or three of your visit, you'll be on patting, chin-chucking terms with most of them.
I went to South Secondary school with A.J. back in the early '70s when we worked together on various artsy/literary undertakings. Though she had shockingly uncool taste in music (James Last, Cliff Richard, show tunes) and a quirky fascination with dinosaurs, her acerbic wit, critical acumen and instinctive love for underdogs of every stripe made her a friend to be cherished.
Late adolescence and the awkward passage into adulthood constitute an ordeal for reasonably sensitive souls. For A.J., the torture was particularly acute and I sometimes worried if she was going to survive it all until she fell in love with a Jewish medical student named Michael Gutman.
Michael does not love reptiles, but he does love A.J. and recognizes that this wildly unorthodox living arrangement is somehow central to her well-being, that this is her mission in life.
But sometimes he too is struck anew by the improbability of it all. My last trip down there we awoke one morning to find A.J. taking care of an iguana who'd been injured the night before in a lizard rumble.
"Oh man, it's a jungle in here," I said in just the right tone to set him off on a laughing fit that seemed to last a full five minutes.
Living large with lizards