About a week later, Mary decided to poop in the middle of the bathroom floor instead of waiting to be put in the tub like a good girl. Hubby and I were both more than a bit annoyed... nothing quite like stepping into the bathroom first thing in the morning and landing your bare foot into a cold, wet, gooey pile of iguana feces.
While hubby hopped away to sanitize his defiled foot, I chased after Mary who appeared to have a rather large chunk of poop still trailing from her vent. She scrambled around the bathroom as best she could, avoiding capture and redecorating the bathroom in shades of iggie poop. Not a look I recommend for Home and Garden.
Finally, I managed to corner her behind the toilet - threw a towel over her to calm her down, then scooped her up and plopped her into the waiting bathtub. I ran more water, turned the shower on, and used both shower stream and small bucket to attempt to wash the offending poop away.
It wasn't poop, per se, that Mary had trailing from her vent, but a piece of plastic bag! I continued rinsing her off until I was certain of what I was seeing. Yep, plastic bag of some sort. I shook my head and asked Mary what on earth possessed her to eat a plastic bag. She just looked up at me with big, sad, innocent eyes.
Grimacing and holding my breath, I took a meek hold of the trailing bag with thumb and forefinger and gave a little tug. Mary scrambled away and I let go. Hmmm... perhaps a goodly dose of mineral oil would do the trick. While I tried to remember where the plastic eye dropper was, I went into the den and told my husband about Mary's latest mishap. Feet now safely entrenched in shoes, hubby came to inspect Mary while I went downstairs in seach of a safe means to administer the mineral oil.
When I came back upstairs, I found out my seaching was for naught. In my absence, hubby took a pair of large, heavy-duty tweasers, grabbed hold of the trailing end of the baggie, and shouted! Mary bolted away from the loud noise and the baggie stayed behind!
Not just any baggie, either. As hubby rushed downstairs with the stinking mess in his hands, I could see that what Mary had swallowed was in fact a 13 gallon kitchen garbage bag!
I guess we'll never know why she ate it, but you can be darn certain that her free roaming time will be much better supervised from now on!