OAKLAND PARK - An iguana trapping company has offered a free-of-charge capture of the iguana that bit a 7-year-old Oakland Park girl.

"We saw it in the paper this morning and I thought we could go and get it and do it free for her," said Andy Pinker, a trapper with Iguana Catchers in Hallandale Beach. Normally the company charges about $250 for trapping. They will contact the family of 7-year-old Madison Wells sometime today, he said. When Madison's mother, Michelle Yurko, heard about the offer, she was thrilled.

"Oh, great. I think that's awesome, that's what this whole things was about," Yurko said. "I'm so glad these people are doing something to help someone else. These guys are doing me a great favor."

Wells, 7, was bitten by an iguana last week. She dropped four strawberries for a 6-foot-long specimen, and the lizard took a bite out of her foot that needed 23 stitches.

"I'm not going to touch any iguanas anymore," Madison said. "I'm afraid of them. Especially the orange ones."

When Madison saw her first iguana in person last Thursday, she thought the creature would just be interested in the food, because she had learned in school that they are typically vegetarians.
Madison said that when she went over to her neighbor's house, her friend's mother told her that she could feed the stray iguana that had taken up residence in the neighborhood . They said they had even given it a name.

Instead, it clamped its jaws around Madison's right foot, tearing at tendons that keep her from wiggling four of her toes.  Madison, a second-grader at Oakland Park Elementary School, was hospitalized from about 6 p.m. to just after midnight.

"It hurt my feelings because it licked everyone else's feet and I thought that it was just going to do that," Madison said. "Maybe it wanted to see what I tasted like."

More likely, the iguana was thinking Madison was a strawberry, said Wildlife Veterinarian Stephan Harsh, who works with the SPCA Wildlife Care Center in Fort Lauderdale.

"I'm sure he liked [the strawberries] a lot and was so eager that he got the foot," Harsh said. "In this case, he was expected to be fed."

Harsh said iguanas are typically not aggressive, though attacks aren't unheard of. In 2002, a 4-foot-long iguana bit a Hollywood boy's fingertip. The boy, then 14, had been keeping it as a pet, but when it attacked him, officers were called and shot the creature.

The non-native reptiles grow to be nearly 7-feet long with sharp teeth, large claws, and jagged tails. About 3 percent of households keep iguanas as pets, which are often later abandoned in canals by owners who no longer desire or are able to take care of them.

Madison's mother, Yurko, 40, contacted police, wildlife, and animal control officials to see if the neighborhood iguana would be removed, but she said that no one was able to come out and trap the animal. She is hoping someone will.

"It's a freak accident" Yurko said. "But that creature doesn't belong in this community."

Indeed, some would rather not see iguanas as pets at all, going as far to say as the state would be better off without them, said veteran iguana hunter George Cera. He wrote "The Iguana Cookbook: Save Florida, Eat an Iguana," which offers tongue-in-cheek recipes for humans featuring iguana meat.

"They are a species of animal are flat out killing our native wildlife," said Cera, who is based out of Sarasota. "People get them and don't realize that they can live 20 years."

Madison is to have surgery soon to repair her tendons, and hopes to return to school next week. However, she said she is worried because her school is just across the street from the house where the iguana bit her.

"I'm afraid to go to school because it could attack me again," Madison said. "Hopefully I won't get hurt anymore."

Workshops

  

Workshops abound with pathetic denizens, long burned out by early splendor, professing life, milked nudged, Iowan slain ducks that may or may not yet the prize, believing their own wash is still on the line.  The light industry of yesteryear for mediocrity to foolishness, because the little factories and stores, the restaurants along the highway that took in poets for short-term salad making and some flips on the grill, where the grits and teeth to voice have faded to industrial mendacity.  The poet, the book itself a produce not iconography, now a poem tossed in the stream in life, or simply a voice of one’s own.

The poets of Blue Collar review, most of whom have gotten their hands dirty and their feet wet say “life” or “work”, offer a rhythmic reminder, a jolt poked by street smarts, zipped and unbuttoned, gleaned with a language, a strike.


 Thus no one speaks the truth.  “Write better poems.” Especially the academic snoot factory riding the chariot around the Emperor’s feet.  Clear voices sublime & entertaining; certainly the hint of no spilling of existential dressing they pass as poetry.


 This is a hard game for the dreamer, the thoughtful poet who cracks at the night in rap, jack, hottypoo idol worship jazz or neo-realistic blathering, whack doo bonk sigh linguistic soliloquy.

Even the Beats have a museum at Broadway in San Francisco.  No need to hit the road to envision the “Beat” life complete with chairs and busts of old hums and street bop.  Soon one might expect the poets, stuffed on wheels and rolled to the street complete with built-in IPods.  Why you can tune right in like the rest of the passive necrophilics hovering in the poetic shadows.


 Sometimes back when, players ario Chalmers and Michael Beasley received $20,000 and $50,000 fines respectively for harboring “improper guests,” during Rookie Transition Program.  One can see the long faces, the eyelids drop in sorrow, the humble 19 year old millionaire awash in grief.  What’s the problem?  Learned behavior, immaturity?  Will they ever learn?


 Folks, it runs right up the block to the Washington School of Bait and Snatch, except those folks don’t pay.  No fines.  No jail time.  Whoever was in the room got theirs.  They own the bank.

Today, passing the buck is a euphemism for stick ‘em up, we want more.  If you don’t like the whore in the bedroom help us buy a new bed, and we’ll introduce you to the pimp now in the office.


 This is serious.  This is, a, a, this is Code Orange.  Could it be Code Red?   You remember Red who used to work in the White House before the bombs, before the….no no that Red.  Was it Red?  No it’s the terrorist and we have to same Democracy.  It’s the terrorists in the bedroom.  No it’s Goldman’s what’s his name, and the AGO, not the ARO.  AIG that’s it.  They made soap, don’t they (or soap opera)?  Or basketballs, or CASH.


America needs cash right now, which you idiots out there have been paying for while the real soap (cash) flies the way to Iraq and Afghanistan.


 Uncle Sam.  Bend over.  We love you.  We really do.  We all agree.  You agree, I’m sure that something must be done and NOW.  Nothing to debate we’re in this together.  We’re sorry.  You can see that.  We don’t blame you at all.  Things will get better.  Hurry up America.

Here is the ball.   Fake, dribble, pass it off and cut to the hoop.  Ah, yes catch us if you can.  We need to train all you Middle American rookies returning to the new game come November, or the old game.

Rain

Thunder. They shuddered. For a second the power failed, the room blinked dark, flashed on and Betsy laughed.  

 “Thank you,” he said.

 Betsy walked to the window and stared into the night. “Harry?”

 “Betsy.”

 “For the dance?”

 “For the dance.”

 Harry turned off the lights and they stood in shadows. A nearby streetlight spread pouring rain before them.  Softness in the air became song.  

They undressed slowly, tossing each garment to distant dream.  Then the door and for a second they stood looking at the rain.  Stepping out, they turned to each other.  Betsy took his hand and twirled and bowed.  Harry bowed.

The night grew around the rain, the silence in-between and the two stepped in, a swing, a run, a turn and Betsy tossed her head back.  Harry spread his arms and drank the sky.  They ran, oh how they ran in the rain.

PABLO

            Pablo was one hot rooster with a big red comb and an array of black and yellow festooned plumage that would stagger the imagination, never mind the job it did on a flock of very exquisite hens.  He’d walk around that yard inspecting the business at hand and despite the fact he was small.., there wasn’t an animal in the neighborhood ready to challenge him.

            Number ONE hen was a lovely Aracauna by the name of Miranda that I had bought from a woman at a garage sale in lieu of a couch.  She was a little too white for show stock, but nonetheless, produced her share of eggs and ran the hen house.  Her Master at Arms was a huge Rhode Island Red named Hanna, who seemed to mete out punishment to the rest of the pecking order according to some secret code passed down from Miranda, usually consisting of a sharp peck in the back of the neck.  Hanna came from a feed store when she was three months old.

            Now Pablo’s story is a little more complicated.  I had been buying feed from a woman up the way for about six months when I saw three roosters walking down the middle of the highway.  I asked her who owned those roosters, and she said she didn’t know.  She was more inclined toward horses, but she did agree to ask around.  About a week later, she flagged me down and took me around back where two of the aforementioned roosters were caged.  It seems that they and a third party had roosted in a pine tree during a rain storm and proceeded to crow half the night, driving the woman up the way half nuts, whereupon, she climbed up the tree in the middle of the night in her nightgown and grabbed two of them and turned them over to the grain lady, who now offered them to me, but only on the condition I take two.

            I didn’t want two roosters, but I took them home and put them in separate cages so as to not to start a war in the hen house.  I named one Pablo and the other Lopez.  Pablo was pretty magnificent already, while Lopez leaned a little to the grunty side.  My plan was to find out, which one crowed the best.  So that night, I set the alarm and got up just before dawn; not that roosters have any qualms about crowing at night.  A set of headlights a mile away will set them off.  And I stood outside the cages and waited until light came and it was not contest.  Pablo won.  That afternoon, I put Lopez in the van and we drove around the country-side until I saw a large flock of chickens on the other side of a very green field.  I helped Lopez for a moment; then popped him through the fence wishing him well, but letting him know, he was in fact on this own.

            So Pablo became my pride and joy, a great crowing bird I could hear for miles.  He took care of the yard and the hens and established the pecking order when Miranda was busy.  If a new hen showed up, which was my doing, in that I was forever bringing more home, Pablo would check her out and then wander off as if he didn’t care, much like some men I’ve known.  Once things had calmed down and Miranda put in her two cents worth, and just about the time you’d think all was well, old Pablo, who had  been lurking on the other side of the lot would suddenly tear across the field and take care of Rooster Business before the new hen knew what hit her.  Then he’d shake himself and smooth out his stride as he wandered off like nothing happened.

            For the most part, Miranda took it all with a grain of salt, unless it was setting time, or just time to put the yard in order.  Then somehow, by some signal I never caught, Pablo saw to it that there was no monkey business; that everyone was accounted for, and that nothing or nobody would get near Miranda while she sat on her eggs.

            Hens and roosters came and went.  There were chickens of all sizes and persuasions and later Muscovey ducks, which bred at night.  And through it all, Pablo held court.  He’d hop up on the porch when we had company and I would point out the terror of his great spurs while guests petted with caution.  

He’d sound warning for all enemies of chickens and humans; a long high squawk that it reminded me of a car braking.  Wary of children, he’d circle them widely, but out of some strange deference, never attacked, although we worried he might.

            The cats never bothered the chickens and for the most part, we were able to keep all the birds out of the birds out of the vegetable garden.  In summer, they’d lollygag, dust themselves, and give us the good eggs daily.  I could tell by the tint, which egg belonged to which hen.  In winter, the cold rain kept them inside for the most part, where they’d dawdle and scratch in the fresh dry. Come spring, we’d start over again, and it was always a pleasure to sit on the side porch and watch them carry on. What a wonder, how they acted very much like humans, maintaining their little community with whatever seemed necessary at the moment, but with much less long range planning.  I always thought it funny, how Pablo did the strutting, while Miranda seemed to make things happen.

            A few years went by and Pablo got old.  A new rooster took his place.  Not a great rooster, but a bigger one, three years younger.  Pablo fell from grace and had to be removed from the flock and in a short time, he went to Rooster Heaven.  Fortunately, I took a picture of him out in the yard during the good times.  I had it blown-up.  What a bird he was, standing out there. 

THE END

           

Where’s the Goose?

To question the free market, look no further than the Reagan era, when the air controller’s union got busted and the workers began getting cross-eyed looking at the screens.  Junk bonds promised cures, insurance companies sold or lost their base and the game became suck the cash out of Paradise and toss the human refuse we “dearly care for” in the trash.

Add Global Economy, NAFTA Folly, endless warfare and this Alaskan Transparency, mimed perfectly on Saturday Night Live, with America’s children prepping “Whatever” bips their ears, crotches, ears and snoots, while John Wayne’s Washington, with lung cancer on the horizon, buys it off with, “So What” and a smirk.

To paraphrase John Nichol's character in, The Magic Journey, all you do is create a whole bunch of issues that don’t exist and get everybody running around not knowing their butt from a hole in the ground and then you do what you want.

When companies buy each other out like over the counter elixers, when mortgages sell like popcorn during intermission and banks smell like loan sharks in Bailout Alley, or one drives a Hummer with a $28,000 a year salary, could there possibly be a shark in the tank? 

The Dow drops 500 points? My niece says her friends are not concerned about the war or the economy.  As long as they have a credit card, there is no need for concern.  Such gracious fodder for the rip-off geniuses who plan privatization and genuflection of free market enterprise while they take off the condoms and cook grandchildren for the next slaughter, fiasco and Dubai suite they can park in,  written off and charged to the tax-friendly hordes we have turned out to be.

Investor, Phillip Wilber Ross, who recently “fixed” the problem at ISG. stated he was once a would-be writer.  When asked if he would ever return to writing he replied,” I have trouble enough with the facts, let alone trying to deal with fiction.”

Obviously he is not alone.  America has spun into such a far-fetched tale, even the fairy godmother, who knows the carriage turns into a pumpkin at midnight, won’t tell Cinderella that the shoe won’t fit forever, unless she gets the facts straight and her house in order. 

A woman told me she bought a goose down pillow at Macy’s.  That night she dreamed blood appeared on the pillow.  The goose was alive.  It frightened her so that she took the pillow back to the store for a refund.  While she was bargaining with the sales clerk, the pillow began honking and running among the bedding, knocking over displays and finally disappearing in the dream, in which she got her refund, but the next night, just before she fell asleep, she thought of the goose and she wondered where it went. 

What strange characters we have become in this plot of loss, this miscue, this slow descent, this hero’s truth, smitten with no sacrifice, no commitment and no allegiance.  In the film, Return of the Jedi, the hero asserts that he is not afraid to descend into the unknown.  The Jedi replies, “You will be.” 

One might add to this tale, “Welcome to America and if you see a live goose amidst the bedding, please let America know.

Who Sold the Rabbit in the Hat to Uncle Sam?

Place your hand over you heart.  Remember the stern-faced Uncle Sam pointing right at you?   “Uncle Sam Wants You.” He wanted you to join the armed forces.  He told you that America needed you. He had a thousand parades to march in and a red white and blue suit to flap in the ever-search for clients who needed guns, and an army to shoot them a country to use them in.  Needless to say, he hasn’t t run out of clients

Ole Sam began pointing in more fruitful times, when the world spun wars that cooked kids for din din, experimented with their organs and fried 600,000 with a single bomb.  But folks don’t just sign up for every invasion, rocket lobbing contest or semi-war anymore.  As Jimmy Carter said, 95.5 % of the American population isn’t sacrificing.  Yes, Sam certainly is pointing, but the flag suit loses face these days, especially when we see it draped over coffins.  It makes one wonder what Sam really had in mind. 

To be a fair, a few patriotic survivors stand along Main Street in front of the empty storefronts, the blank theater marquees, the silent mills, the Mom and Pops stores with the outdated pinball machines tucked out back.  The adults give Sam a little credence and the children seem fidgety The bands stride by, maybe three bands this year from the usual high schools, the baton twirlers, fresh and ready,  toss clips of innocence and ecstasy at the sky; let’s  say Troy, New York, a clutch of rototillers spin down Sixth Avenue.  Why’s there’s old Elmer.  Still at it.  Shaved the mustache.  You’d think he’d retire.  Worked there how many years?.  Got hooked up with that woman who works for the government over in Albany.  Helluva guy.  Down the block he walks, with the rest of the tough guys and gals of the time, the time now running out toward the Hudson River a block away.  

Why here comes Uncle Sam, because Troy is Uncle Sam’s home, so this must be the real Uncle Sam lumbering by, waving to the thin crowd, bringing perhaps a momentary silence between distant drum beats, which as the poet Bob Kaufman said, is the must because, to paraphrase, without the silence there is no drum, there is no beat.

Uncle Sam marches on amidst this fantastic orgy beyond the parade, where these days, fingers point to selves.  “I am me” cries everywhere.  Uncle Sam’s finger seems stiff, an arthritis, or a thrombosis with odds that the heart of America may stop, or at least beat irregularly through the body we so dearly love.

The Grief Man

He had an idea for the New Year and he knew he could make money on it. He rented a sky blue pickup truck and stuck signs on the doors that read:

THE GRIEF MAN
Pick Up and Hauling, Day or Night
No Grief Refused.
Reasonable Rates
Telephone 1-800 NO-GRIEF

He drove around the neighborhoods for weeks. At first people peered through their curtains or went in the house when he slowed down, but one day a small woman in her seventies waddled down her front walk and asked him if he could take the memory of her dead husband. After six years, not only did she not miss him, but he was haunting her house to the point where she couldn't find anybody else, and she had to admit he wasn't, if you asked her ninety-six year old mother, a very nice man to begin with.

The Grief Man smiled and she wrote a check. He put the dead husband memory in the truck and drove off slowly, partly out of a sense of honor and hopefully, so the rest of the neighborhood would see that he really was serious and write down his phone number.
Of course the woman got on the phone and the word spread. Within days his phone was ringing off the hook. He could barely fill his orders. A man wanted to get rid of his son's drug addiction, another man wanted to be relieved of the embarrassment of wearing a hairpiece, not the hair piece mind you, the embarrassment thereof. A child called. It seems the kid down the block got a tan cowboy hat and he got a red hat when all he really wanted was AUTO THEFT. He couldn't throw his red hat away because everyone would know. Parents called in droves to rid themselves of the worry of what to do about leaving their children alone. Alcoholics called at all hours of the day and night. The back of his truck reeked with alcoholic grief going into withdrawal without people. Then there were the sick, the elderly and the fleeced who had lost their entire savings to Illness or inscrutability. The Grief Man left them at the curb with cherubic smiles. A single mother wanted traffic removed. A fish cutter said he never wanted to see another fish; a fast food worker wanted the smell of French fries removed forever. A set of twin women in their forties wanted to rid themselves of their likeness.

The Grief Man took credit cards. The Grief Man bought two cell phones. He didn't need to advertise. The Grief Man could barely fill his orders. The Grief Man had to rent a warehouse. A woman from Pembroke Pines, Florida said she was too hot. A man from Pulaski, New York said he was too cold. The Grief Man agreed to take heat and cold via overnight express. A Chicago banker wanted the entire New Year removed and the Grief Man devised a way to do it on the installment plan with balloon payments. Best he could do given such short notice. The banker agreed. A Las Cruces, New Mexico woman, wanted slipperiness taken out of satin sheets. Children with dead pets called from all over the world. A little girl from Adams, Massachusetts wanted a sun fish she caught, cleaned and buried in the back yard the summer before, to be put back in the lake. A therapist from Los Altos, California wanted to know if the Grief Man could remove the need, "To talk it all out." A man who said he represented a large government agency he refused to identify, called regarding the elimination of war and poverty, but left no return phone number.

The Grief Man got rich. He picked up a too-late Eminem record collection, sixteen truckloads of Brittney Spears supermarket Musak and one volume of poetry by Robert Service, four hundred thousand truckloads of used Harry Potter videos, a four by eight mini-storage unit full of 1950s memories and stadium-size tonnage of books about the uselessness of the sixties. The Grief man couldn't fill the number of orders for the removal of grief over the Martin Luther King and Kennedy assassinations, but he managed to put a dent in it.
So it was, on New Years Eve at 11.57 PM. that he drove his truck up to the side of his house, full of last minute pickups. Exhausted, but happy, he gazed wearily at the Christmas tree aglow by the fireplace in the adjoining living room. He sat down at the kitchen table and opened a beer. He watched the smoky gas escape from the top. He picked up the bottle and brought it to his lips. The phone rang. He promised himself he would not answer. He listened to the phone. One, two, three, four, rings; he wanted to drink his beer. He picked up the phone.

It was the little boy of the red cowboy hat. The Grief Man wanted to know what he was doing up at that hour and the boy said he'd been to church and the minister told him to be grateful for what he had instead of always wanting what somebody else had and could the Grief Man return his red hat? The Grief Man hesitated for a second. He sighed deeply. Yes, it was the New Year and this was a little boy. Little boys don't always understand what, or why they do what they do.
The Grief Man looked at the nice cold beer he hadn't even sipped. Now he had to go out and get the red hat, but before he could get his coat on, the other phone rang again. The kitchen clock read 12.09 AM. It was the New Year. The woman on the phone was crying. She said she was Susan of the Susan and Sylvia twins. She said no one recognized her without Sylvia and would he please, please return her to, at least, a shadow of her former self.

By 12.20 AM. the phones never stopped. The fast food worker said she needed the smell of French fries on her skin to feel alive, the alcoholics wanted their drinks, parents wanted their children to go somewhere, anywhere, so they could be alone, the cold man from Pulaski couldn't stand sweat, the hot woman from Pembroke Pines couldn't stop shivering, the banker called to say the balloon payments on the removal of New Year had given him no place to begin, nor end, and the widow called to say she discovered the Grief Man's phone number on the refrigerator door and it reminded her that she needed to cry, but she couldn't remember what for, so would it be possible, to return what it was she had forgot to remember, immediately.

Thereafter the Grief Man's phone never stopped ringing as he drove frantically and forever into the night of nights, the forwarding of calls jamming his truck phone, his ears, his very life; the calls to the Grief Man waxing in the dawn of hope.