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.