Featuring: Iguana Tell You JOAN VASS LE PAINTY One more challenge in the cycle of life. (France) VOTRE NOM (Paris) ERICA MEYER RAUZIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS ZANETIA (WADI) GISPA KNITS W (Milan) MARGARET (MEMO?" KNITS APRIORI (Division Of Escada) LOITBEN HOURS: NOW LOCATED IN THE ORCHARD MALL Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday Friday - Saturday 10 ANI - 6 PM Thursday 10 AM - 9 PM 6337-B Orchard Lake Road West Bloomfield, MI 48322 (810) 626-0886 1r Irr 1-r-r Ir GRAND OPENING! Ladies... If you like Home Garden TV, Victoria Magazine or the Martha 8tewart look, you will love my shop. We specialize in Antique and Primitive Painted Furniture. Come visit... WOOD8 'RR DEIGN 26013 Coolidge, 2 blocks north of 101/4 Mile Qoad, Oak Park flours: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, friday 10-3 For insurance call SY WARSHAWSKY, C.L.U. 7071 Orchard Lake Road Suite 110 In the J&S Office Bldg. W. 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The friends who came to din- ner last Shabbat brought a gift for our six-year-old son. They had warned me that they would and, naively, I thanked them. The gift is a bright green iguana in its own big terrarium, com- plete with driftwood to climb on and a little plaster food dish that looks like it is carved out of black rock. Cute, for a reptile, and totally contained. I felt like Ed McMa- hon setting up Johnny Carson when I said to our friends, "This is great, just super. This is all we'll ever need for this iguana, isn't it?" "Well " they answered, "A few other little things might come up. He may need, well, a heat lamp, and stuff like that." `Stufflike that' turns out to be a "warm rock" that plugs in and gives the critter someplace cozy to bask ($29). 'Stuff turns out to include the aforementioned heat lamp ($19) plus the requisite spectrum bulb ($9), daylight, the hollowed-out hiding log ($11), the water dish ($3), and the hu- midity mister ($5). This iguana lives better than Lassie. full The lizard was cute, for a reptile. "What does he eat?" we asked. "Oh, just about everything," they said, "Except no meat or cit- rus or strawberries." What he is supposed to eat is carefully carved vegetable and fruit peels and a special iguana food and vitamin mix ($11), which he has so far refused to eat. He likes lettuce (romaine or Boston, mind you, not iceberg). He'll deign to consume cucum- ber peels and slivers of apple. I'm just this short of bringing him caviar. The iguana book ($9.95) says he'll eat yellow squash, but I have resisted making a special trip to the produce market just to find out since no other living being under our roof — human or canine — has any interest at all in squash. "Is he friendly," we wondered. "Sure," they said. "Pick him up, stroke his head. He'll get to know you." Either he refuses to get to know me, or he knows me and just doesn't like me; but this is not working. I bring him his mix of gourmet veggies and fruit. I change the water in his dish, re- arrange his driftwood to be scenic and useful, and — as- suming that any beast which has received all this largess ought to at least be sociable — reach in to give him a pat. Right away, he rolls his yellow eyes at me, opens his toothless mouth, and tries to knock my hand up and out of the terrarium with his tail. Ingrate. My husband can pick him up, if he puts on gardening gloves. Our six-year-old is dying to try, but for now is content running one stubby, grubby little finger down the critter's snout as its amber eyes slowly close. While my spouse holds the iguana, guess who gets to tidy up the cage. I anticipated lots of challenges when I became a mom, but I'm not sure I antici- pated serving as janitor to a rep- tile. The former owner, a teen-age boy, could pick the iguana up easily, perch it on his shoulder, and do the polka with it for all I know. We are not at that ad- vanced stage of rapport just yet. For now, it is simply the object of group fascination. Only our 13-year-old daughter is totally untouched. "That thing," she calls it, as in "Why do we have to have that thing?" I suppose she would call it by name if it had one, but our son changes its name more often that I change its water dish. So far it has been Mike, Spike, Magic, Greeny, Dino and Iggy. But the little kids love it. If I had a quarter for every time a neighborhood child has pressed his or her nose up to that glass tank, I'd be rich. I'd even be able to afford my free iguana. 0 Publicity Deadlines 1393 St 111fOODWARD AVE., BIRMINGHAM, MI 48009 (810) 644-8565 Mon.-Frl. 9-6 Saturday 9-3 Metro Mule for Over 35 Years The normal deadline for local news and publicity items is noon Thurs- day, eight days prior to issue date. The deadline for birth announce- ments is 10 a.m. Monday, four days prior to issue date; out-of-town obituaries, 10 a.m. Tuesday, three days prior to issue date.