 | mobile - desktop |
|
| mobile - desktop |
|
 |
 Contact Sales! |
News & Events:
|
Posted by Desiree on June 13, 2001 at 09:09:34:
Teen rescues neighborhood from iguana
A quick basketball shot into a tree knocked the lizard loose.
By Carlos Rodriguez And Roy Wenzl
The Wichita Eagle
This is a story that's mostly about a lizard but a little about basketball.
Ready?
For the past five days, from Friday until Tuesday, there was a loose iguana running around a north Wichita neighborhood.
Neighborhood residents such as Endelia Rocha and Rosa Garcia watched it run around, eat grass, climb trees. They were a little creeped out.
It's not that they dislike iguanas. It's just that they know enough about them to know that they can spread salmonella, that they sometimes bite, and that a neighborhood full of curious kids wasn't the best place to have an iguana running around in trees, especially when it looked maybe 3 feet long.
"What if it comes down and bites one of them?" Garcia asked.
Rocha and Garcia knew they needed to call Animal Control, but they don't speak English.
So they talked to Jean Long, an English-speaking neighbor.
"We've always had lots of cats, opossums or occasional skunks. Now we have iguanas," Long said.
Long called Animal Control on Monday.
Nothing happened. Animal Control officials said that at times when Animal Control is short-staffed, as on Monday, a loose iguana is what they call "low priority" compared with stray dogs.
They made it out to the 2500 block of Rosenthal Avenue on Tuesday, though, and made an effort to capture the lizard.
In other words, they looked up in the tree where the lizard lay sunning on a limb, and they realized they didn't have a ladder to bring it down.
They left, to get a ladder.
At this point, neighborhood residents took matters into their own hands. They gathered basketballs, volleyballs and soccer balls.
They started tossing them into the tree.
They missed the lizard. And then Kristian Fernandez decided to get some altitude.
Kristian , a 16-year-old junior at North High School, climbed onto the roof of his house and crept near the tree.
He threw a basketball.
Whop.
Down came Mr. Iguana.
Down jumped Fernandez.
Ten minutes of frantic running around later, Kristian captured Mr. Iguana, bagging him in a pillowcase from his own bed.
Someone called Animal Control.
They came back and took the iguana from Kristian. An Animal Control officer carefully checked over Kristian's hands and arms, looking for wounds; he found none.
Kristian, thinking this was a good bit of work, asked the Animal Control people: "Do I get anything?" Meaning, he said, a reward.
The Animal Control officer replied: "Hold on." He went to his truck.
He came back. "Hold out your hands," he said. Kristian held out his hands.
The officer squeezed a quantity of lotion into Kristian's hands.
Kristian looked disappointed.
But he can take solace in one thing.
At the age of only 16, he has done something with a basketball that not even Michael Jordan has ever done.
He whopped the iguana.
Iguanas are not indigenous to Kansas. Ownership of iguanas as pets is prohibited within city limits and can result in a fine up to $500.
Animal Control will detain the animal for three days. If arrangements to remove this iguana from city limits aren't made by its rightful owner, the animal will be donated to a veterinary clinic outside the city.
Animal Control can be reached at 268-8473.
