THE WESTERLEY SUN (Rhode Island) 31 August 05 The Misadventures Of 'Pretty Girl' (Chris Keegan)
Ashaway: It took less than 10 minutes for Kimberly Corbin's 3-year-old Green Iguana to escape from her Cemetery Lane home. It took four days to find her and ensure she was safely home.
Sunbathing in her living room window last Friday, Pretty Girl seemed to enjoy the hot rays of the sun, so Corbin stepped out for just a few moments. She returned to a small tear in the window's screen - a hole large enough for the 41/2-foot long lizard to slither through.
"I think she reached up to grab the window, cut the screen with the claws on her back legs and fell out," Corbin said Tuesday. "My husband and I were really upset."
Frantically searching her yard for the next three hours, Corbin said she looked as high as the trees on her property - knowing that the lizard's instinct would direct it to climb to the highest point in its surrounding. But Pretty Girl was nowhere to be found.
Purchased as a Christmas present for her now 11-year-old daughter Eliza, the pet quickly outgrew her 20-gallon tank and now resides in a two-level, 5-foot-by-5-foot pen constructed out of wood and Plexiglas inside the Corbin's Ashaway home.
"She likes heat and to be sprayed with warm water," Corbin said. "When she's looking at you and moves her head up and down, it's her way of saying hi. She's got a mirror in her cage that she walks over to. She thinks she's seeing another lizard and talks to it."
Though Eliza had originally named her Dude, Corbin said the animal slowly became responsive to her mother's inadvertent praise during meals.
"Whatever you say when you feed them they consider their name to be," Corbin said. "She likes watermelon, cilantro, squash and red leaf lettuce - but she doesn't like carrots."
Indigenous to tropical rainforests in Central America, Southern America and the Caribbean Islands, Green Iguanas typically grow between 4 and 6 feet in length. The cold-blooded omnivore's sense of smell and vision are highly evolved, according to the Wildlife Trust.
Corbin said it's not uncommon to find Pretty Girl roaming around her house with the family's cat and four puppies. The lizard will scratch at the door of her pen when she wants to be freed, she said.
"She likes to walk around the house and look out the window," Corbin said. "We've never had problems with the animals."
On Tuesday afternoon, Corbin - who contacted the Sun in an effort to alert neighbors of the loss - said she was standing on her front lawn talking to her mother when she noticed a familiar green tail in a tree near her mailbox.
"I looked up, saw her and ran inside to get my husband," she said. "I was really happy. My little dog that plays with her was very happy too."
Though her scaly skin was unscathed, Corbin said the lizard appeared hesitant to return to her pen after her five-day vacation.
"She wasn't very happy when I put her back in her cage," she said. "From now on when I put her out, the windows will be shut."
The Misadventures Of 'Pretty Girl'