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Posted by IgLady on July 29, 2002 at 08:15:35:

From the June 30, 2002 Star Ledger
Somerset & Hunterdon Counties

Love of lizards, on a large scale
Reptile rescuer finds is enough -- for the time being
Sunday, June 30, 2002
BY CATHY BUGMAN
Star-Ledger Staff
When Elaine Powers visits a pet store, there's always a chance she won't leave empty-handed.
What she can't resist is the reptile section, and too often she finds the lizards in cramped conditions, without sufficient food and water, she said. When that happens, Powers usually ends up taking them home.
The research biologist currently has eight of them at her High Bridge home, each enjoying its own sumptuously large glass abode and dining on a rich variety of green vegetables.
"They're my babies," said Powers, who is 43. "They go to bed at 9 o'clock and don't talk back. They stay affectionate."
After getting home from work, Powers feeds the lizards and cleans them, clipping their toenails and giving them time to romp around the living room floor. She lets out only two at a time because they are quite territorial.
A straw mat lies in front of Powers' fireplace, where she and her reptile companions relax together on winter nights, often watching nature shows on television.
She cleared the sill of her living room window to give them a view of the outside world, such as the birds snacking at the feeder, and she placed a tall plant holder by the door for them to climb.
For their gastronomic pleasure, she grows nasturtiums on her patio.
"Elaine takes care of their emotional needs as well, providing them with mental stimulus," said Phillip Roerig, a veterinarian with Glen Manor Veterinary Hospital in Glen Gardner.
Over the past year, he has sent several iguanas to Powers' home for rehabilitation.
"Almost every reptile I see comes in for problems having to do with inadequate husbandry," Roerig said. "It's not due to ill intent; it's just that there's not a lot of knowledge out there on proper care of reptiles. Elaine is very knowledgeable."
Growing up with an older brother who was allergic to fur, snakes were the pets of choice in Powers' house. But Powers always had the idea in the back of her mind that she would one day like to own an iguana.
That day came six years ago, when she read in a company newsletter that an 11-year-old girl was looking for a home for hers. The girl had acquired it as a Christmas present two years earlier, named it Noel, and later lost interest.
"I thought, 'This is a sign,'" Powers said. "Noel was badly undernourished. Here was an iguana who I could care for. And so my obsession began."
It takes awhile for an iguana to get comfortable with their human companions, she said. "They are wild animals; they whip, bite, get frantic -- it can take months to win their trust," Powers said.
Her iguanas have their own room in the house, away from her two turtles, Tommy, an Eastern painted terrapin who has the second bedroom, and Trevor, who is at home in the kitchen.
With the temperature kept at a minimum of 80 degrees, similar to what their cohorts in the wild enjoy in their native habitats in the trees in Mexico and Central America, the iguanas' room is designed to be a happy place for them.
It's quite a different setting from the scene she saw two years ago in a Phillipsburg pet store, where eight iguanas were stuffed into a box she said should have been for one.
"I was traumatized," she said. "I bought three of them."
All her iguanas are of the common green variety, although each looks different, some taking on an orange hue, others stripes.
Their personalities are also very diverse.
Loa, for instance, desires cuddles and strokes, while Azure just revels in hanging onto Powers' shoulder without being touched while she does the laundry or the dishes.
"They have their moods," she said. "When they're out of sorts, I always claim they got up on the wrong side of the branch."
An amateur herpetologist, she is so devoted to her friends that she will skip dinner just to make time to prepare theirs.
As Powers diligently nurses them back to health, she also is recording their memoirs. And she's even incorporated iguanas into scripts she's written for Hunterdon Radio Theatre, one of her hobbies.
"They're very intelligent animals," she said. "But they're a lot of work."
Cathy Bugman works in the Somerset bureau. She can be reached at cbugman@starledger.com or (908) 429-9929.

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