| Our Iguana Habitat and Cage |
| UNDER CONSTRUCTION When Bailey and I (and Favor kitty) moved to Las Vegas at the end of 2000 (and I do mean the end... we pulled into town on December 30) to live with my new husband, I had just assumed that Bailey would live the way he had always lived - as a free roamer. Unfortunately, I hadn't discussed this in detail with my husband - or my mother-in-law, whose house we were moving into. We tried to let Bailey free roam at first, but there were just too many things to get into, too many breakables, too much *stuff* to make free roaming practical. So we briefly turned a closet into a space for Bailey to sleep, but there still wasn't any way for him to get exercise. As it happened, we had an empty pool in the backyard. MIL cannot swim, so she had the pool drained of water long ago and it had been sitting empty and unused for years. The more I looked at that big empty hole in the backyard, the more certain I was that we could put it to some practical use. Then it hit me... an iguana habitat! With the right materials, we could turn the old swimming pool into a jungle habitat for Bailey. All we needed was some shade, and a way to keep him from climbing out via the stairs in the shallow end. It was a lot of work, but eventually we got the pool turned into quite a nice iguana habitat and Bailey seemed to enjoy living there much more than he enjoyed living a dark closet. Shade cloth was secured over the deep end of the pool - a vital necessity as the summer temps here in Vegas can get far above what is healthy for an iguana (today, for instance, July 16, 2005 - it is 5:30 p.m. and the temperature outside is 120 farhenheit!). We also bought a mister which we secured to a long pole and strung across the top of the deep end. Logs, branches, and limbs were collected and placed in the deep end to create plenty of climbing opportunities for Bailey. We even bought a kiddie wadding pool and filled it with feeder goldfish. Bailey would spend hours on hot summer days submerged in the wadding pool while dozens of goldfish nibbled at his loose skin and the bits of food clinging to his face. Then winter came and the critical flaw in our plan was revealed. Actually, it wasn't so much of a flaw as something we hadn't thought of. Since the pool had been in disrepair for so long, the pump and filter no longer worked. When the first winter rain came, our lovely jungle habitat turned into a swamp! At first, we bailed the water out by hand... carrying heavy buckets from the "swamp" up to the shallow end for dumping - but that got old real quick. By the second or third rain, we knew we needed a better plan. A better plan got put off, though, as the weather turned cold enough to necessitate bringing Bailey back inside for the remainder of winter. The following spring, we borrowed a sump pump from a neighbor and started in on version 2 of the pool habitat. As fate would have it, this would be the norm for the next several years. Each spring we rebuild the habitat, each winter Mother Nature does her best to destroy it again. |
| POOL HABITAT 2001 | ||||
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| POOL HABITAT 2002 | ||||
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| POOL HABITAT 2003 | ||||
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| POOL HABITAT 2004 | ||||
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