When I picked up Taterbug from school today, she informed me that she had a fairly large project/report she was working on. The teacher allowed each of the kids to pick out an animal and I expected hers' to be warm and snuggly. When she told me she was writing about iguanas, I gulped.

I am not a fan of the leathery, cold, slimy, and scaly species nor do I allow any to be kept in my house. I just about had a heart attack last summer when a rather large alligator lizard crept out of a stack a wood and made a beeline across my driveway. Needless to say, I wasn't too excited about her choice in critters. But, it's her report and I decided to make the best of it. After all, I was kinda excited since this is her first "real" project requiring her to put in a lot of time and energy. My little girl is growing up. *Sniff* Next thing you know, it will be a thesis or even her first sci-fi novel. *Double sniff and a snort*

She had all sorts of ideas involving many chunks of clay, pipe cleaners, glitter, and Easter egg grass. My ideas involved crayons and construction paper (so much less vacuuming). Needless to say, we had to have a quick planning and budgeting meeting since we were obviously thinking of two different ideas. It was finally decided (over cherry soda and cookies) we would take a look at the local pet store and see if they had any iguanas. If they did, we would try and capture a couple of shots of the beast.

Our nearest pet store was the Fortuna Pet Shoppe. I hadn't recently been in there (mainly due to Hubby's orders), and was so pleasantly surprised when we walked through the front door. They had a lot of different animals that touched at my various comfort levels eliciting a variety of distances I was willing to breach; fish (nose to tank), rodents (one foot an inch), snakes (fifty feet - aw heck, who am I kidding, I didn't go near the things!), birds (six inches as long as the beak was little and dull), and lizards (three feet - just outside of striking and gross out distance).

The grand prize of the day? A huge female iguana whose name I didn't quite catch. Let's just say I wasn't too thrilled to be that close nor was I interested in taking her home as little Taterbug requested. Barf. I think I wore my first layer of skin away due to my use of antiseptic gel.

Taters held the greenish gray beast until her little heart was content. The cool part was that the store employees were so nice and let us take pictures for as long as we wanted.

Look at this smile? Who's kid is this? Certainly not mine if she was happy to be holding this thing!

After oohing and ahhing at the iguana, we took a gander at the baby parrots. Oh. My. Goodness. I just wanted to squeeze their little fluffy goodness. But that would probably hurt them and their beaks looked a tad bit sharp. I have very meaty thumbs and I'd like them to stay that way:

We saw a hungry parrot who showed us his/her nut cracking abilities:

And a pair of super cute birds (I think they were also a type of parrot) sharing bath time (should I feel bad for watching?):

Finally, when I had about all I could take of cuteness, Taterbug begged and pleaded with me to buy her an organic toothbrush. Normally, I'm all for the environment, but I knew Hubby would flip at this natural plaque fighter:

All in all, we had a great time at the pet shop. The store was clean and the employees were super friendly and extremely helpful. We got some great shots and even better yet, we managed to walk out with no additional animals, so my marriage is still intact. A HUGE THANKS to the Fortuna Pet Shoppe!!!