A tale of two iguanas: One in the zoo and the other in the air

Writer’s note: On a recent family trip to Chattanooga (see last week’s feature), I saw an iguana in the city’s zoo. It was a massive specimen, and judging from the looks of it, the reptile had some years on it. In captivity iguanas can live up to 20 years. So, this creature probably had some experience and a lot of iguana wisdom stored in its reptilian brain, at least as much as a caged animal can. They are gnarly looking beasts, iguanas, living dinosaurs that have become invasive pests in some places and prized pets in others. Seeing this one reminded me of someone I knew nearly 20 years ago. 

Ray was a shipment receiving assistant for a large plumbing and electrical wholesaler in Atlanta. I was fresh out of college, newly married and desperate for work, but unable to find a newspaper hiring at the time I settled for a warehouse gig. 

The business was booming. About a dozen delivery trucks left the dock every morning laden with parts and supplies destined for construction sites across the region. At lunchtime, the fleet returned to be reloaded and sent out again. A small army of salespeople, fueled by coffee and cigarettes, were constantly on the move, stopping into the office long enough to file their sales slips and check their hair and ties in the mirror before going to woo another contractor. With that much inventory leaving, new material was constantly coming in, in need of unloading from massive trucks, checking into the cataloging system and stocking in the massive warehouse. 

To cut my teeth in that fast-paced environment, I was assigned to the receiving team, only a two-man department. You could say that Ray was my first job supervisor, charged with teaching me the delivery schedules and business procedures. I was no stranger to manual labor. I grew up moving boxes in warehouses and digging ditches on a landscaping crew. Ray was much older than me, a college drop-out and post-Vietnam-era Army discharge, who had a penchant for unapologetic laziness.

What Ray lacked in work ethic he made up for in his ability to tell stories. He never shied away from spinning yarn on his past adventures, even mistakes, the best of which revolved around an aggressive reptile. 

One day during a smoke break, he took many smoke breaks throughout the day, he began to talk about an old girlfriend of his. The flame he was trying to kindle was quenched by a pet iguana. Though the two lovebirds were hitting it off, the lizard didn’t take too kindly to a suitor. Each visit was met with a relentless iguana assault, Ray recalled. He became so peeved with this pet, he said, that one day he went over to her apartment while she was working. When the lizard leaped toward him, he trapped it in a bedsheet and tossed it through an open third-story window. 

Ray was fully animated while telling his tale, arms flailing and spinning in imitation of wrapping the beast in cloth and discarding it in the air, the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth all the while. The girlfriend was distraught, of course, and the relationship fell apart, he said. 

Later that year, the housing market crashed, and the world fell into the Great Recession. The trucks stopped running. Pink slips were issued, and the army of salespeople and warehouse staff was culled. Ray was one of the first to be let go. I found a new job, writing for a newspaper, and Ray was never seen again. 

Just like the pet iguana.