By Jan Jackson • Special to the Statesman Journal
West Salem may not look like a typical tropical neighborhood, but a 10-year old, 7-pound 4-foot iguana named Sissy thinks it's the next best thing.
She lives in an apartment in her own giant two-story cage, she sleeps all night and is awake all day, she has her own daytime place in a sun-lit window and her own UV light for summer when the sunny window is too hot. She lounges on a heating pad, eats and drinks only what she should, she sees her veterinarian when she needs to and her family loves her.
"Sissy is calm, quiet and beautiful," Ann Hussey said of her prized pet. "I keep her in her cage or in the window most of the time because she's clumsy, and when she runs around loose, she knocks stuff over with her tail. They also like to be the highest thing in the room, so more than once, I've found her hanging over the sides of curtain rod and had to peel her off and bring her back down.
"She's cage toilet-trained, which is nice. When I first got her, I put a pan of what I considered drinking water in her cage and would be dismayed because she went to the bathroom in it. I learned that in the wild, they sit on a branch over water to relieve themselves, so now instead of trying to make it a place for her to drink, I make sure she gets lots of moisture in her food."
Sissy eats dark leafy green vegetables, she likes bananas and her diet is supplemented with a canned iguana food.
"I know not ever to feed her dog food or anything else you would feed a cat or dog," Hussey said.
Sissy entered the Hussey household a year after Ann's oldest son Andrew went off to college and on an impulse, bought himself an iguana.
"I walked by a pet shop, saw the iguanas and bought" one, said Andrew Hussey, who now lives in North Salem. "When I got her, she was a year old and about the length of an egg carton — maybe a little longer with the tail. However, the responsibility of raising one is more like taking care of a child and I don't think people stop and think about that."
An iguana, he said, is definitely an adult pet that requires enough money to take the right kind of care of it. After a year, Andrew ended up giving the iguana to his mother.
"If I walked by a pet shop today, the only thing I would be tempted to buy would be dog food for my brother's dog," he said.
In the wild, iguanas can live about 25 years, but the life span in captivity is much shorter because people don't know how to care for them properly.
"You have to be very careful about which Web sites you read or who you talk to because there is a lot of bad information out there," said Dr. Richard Hillmer, Oak Hills Veterinary Clinic in West Salem. "It is critical that they have a proper diet, proper housing and the right care, which includes being kept at the right temperature range."
Hillmer works closely with Dr. Mark Burgess, who owns the Southwest Animal Hospital/Exotic Animal Practice in Beaverton and has spent the last 20 years working on small exotic pets.
"I specialize in birds, cats and dogs and see one or two iguanas a month while he sees more than that a day," Hillmer said.
"Ann has done a great job, and though we are watching Sissy closely now because she acts like she is preparing to grow another clutch of eggs, today's exam showed she is in wonderful condition."
Sissy already has laid two clutches of eggs — 40 the first time and 60 the second — and both ended up as projects in West Salem school science labs.
"The eggs weren't fertile because we don't have a male iguana to go with her, but it was still pretty interesting to see the insides," said Alex Hussey, a West Salem High school student who helps his mother care for Sissy. "It grossed some of the kids out because they look like a squishy version of our eggs on the outside and a dense yellow material on the inside.
"My friends think it's cool that we have a gigantic lizard, though no one ever comes over and asks if they can pet her."
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