BY ZEBULON CORK
Larry Gobblebrook loved his son Richie. He loved him more than words could express. Every day since his son Richie’s glorious birth, he’d prayed to the Lord Jesus up high and thanked him for blessing him with such a beautiful boy.
However, any time he thanked Jesus for that wonderful son of his, he also cursed him, along with the Almighty God the Father, as well as the Holy Spirit, for ever giving his son the idea to get a pet iguana.
At first, Poko the Iguana seemed like a normal iguana. He certainly seemed normal when they’d bought him from a shady-looking guy in a back alley, who was offering exotic pets for just 2 cents apiece.
“You can either have this iguana or this fluffy little puppy here,” he said, holding Poko the Iguana in one hand and a little puppy dog in the other. When Larry looked at that puppy, though, he could clearly see the satanic bloodlust in its eyes, so he urged his son to pick the iguana.
Now, though, he kind of wished he’d told his son to take his chance with the puppy…because that iguana had already put him through hell.
You see, Poko the Iguana had the indubitably odd habit of taking his flappy little hands and playing any surface he could find like a bongo drum. Most often, this was the surface of his tank: he’d scurry up to the side of his tank, and begin playing complex Caribbean rhythms on the side of the tank.
His wife, Gertrude, and his son, Richie, both loved to dance to these admittedly-kind-of-groovy rhythms. But Larry didn’t appreciate that lizard’s rhythm so much, especially when it started banging away at 3 in the morning, just when he was catching his most precious and valuable Zs.
His wife and son insisted he just needed to lighten up. “Come on, Larry,” Gertrude would say, whenever he was awakened at 3AM by Poko’s bongo drumming, “that iguana is obviously talented, and passionate about its rhythmic escapades…I say we embrace its talents!”
Larry didn’t feel like embracing its talents, though, especially since that damned iguana bongo drummed nearly 12 hours per day. It was enough to drive anyone up the wall…except for Richie and Gertrude, apparently, who just fell more and more in love with Poko the longer he kept bongo drumming through the night.
What really put Poko beyond forgiveness, though, was what he did to Larry’s car.
You see, Larry had a very special, very amazing car that he loved to death: a 2003 Honda Civic. That Honda Civic, which was still as shiny as it had been on the day it had come off the used car lot, was Larry’s most prized possession. He loved that car almost as much as he loved Richie and Gertrude. It was practically a fourth member of the family.
Well, one day, Larry was positioned below his sink, trying to figure out why the water coming from their taps had turned a suspicious shade of green…when he heard that iguana’s bongo drumming again.
Except this wasn’t drumming against the glass of its tank. This drumming was…tinnier. More metallic.
Almost like the sound of an iguana bongo drumming against the hood of a 2003 Honda Civic.
“No,” Larry said, “No!”
Abandoning all thought of the sickly-looking water coming out of their sink, Larry dashed into the garage…and saw exactly what he feared he would see.
It was Richie’s pet iguana, Poko, sitting on the hood of his beloved Honda Civic, bongo drumming away, wearing a smile wider than the Grand Canyon, its eyes twinkling with malice, with hatred, with thoughts of revenge.
“Stop!” Larry cried out, “Stop it right now!”
But Poko didn’t stop. It just started to drum faster…and faster…and faster…until, all of a sudden, something snapped…and then something else snapped…and then, out of nowhere, Larry’s precious Honda Civic collapsed underneath Poko the Iguana, fell to pieces right underneath its lizard feet.
Poko dashed off the hood before Larry could catch it and throttle it as he so desperately wished to do…but even if he’d managed to catch the iguana, it was already far too late. His car collapsed so utterly and totally that, when it was done falling apart, it was literally just a pile of screws, nuts, bolts and scrap metal.
And then, somehow, the heaping wreckage caught fire.
Later on, after many nights of crying into his pillow, crying into his cereal, and even crying through several days of work at his job as a jumbotron repair salesman, Larry went to the mechanic to see how much it would cost to get it fixed…and the number he was given almost gave him a heart attack.
“$16.9 million,” the mechanic said, “man, that iguana really did a number on your car. That’s the 2003 Honda Civic for you, though. Or didn’t you hear about the recall?”
Larry blinked. “What recall?”
“Apparently some guys in Malaysia left their Honda Civics out for a while, and when they came back, they were piles of burnt wreckage, too, just like yours. They eventually figured out it was the iguanas that did it. The minds of science still aren’t sure what causes the 2003 Honda Civic to fall apart like that in the presence of iguanas, but they have proven that they do. Sorry, man. All I can say is I hope you have iguana insurance.”
Needless to say, Larry’s next stop was the insurance place…where they had some very bad news for him.
“I’m very much afraid,” the insurance salesman, who bore an almost exact resemblance to John Goodman, said, “that your Honda Civic was not insured against frenzied iguana bongo drumming.”
Larry tried to take deep breaths, tried to calm himself down…but he couldn’t. He was filled with rage and hatred. Rage and hatred against Poko the Iguana, who’d ruined his life so utterly.
“Next time you get a car,” the Goodman-ish insurance guy said, “make sure to get it insured against the works. Acts of God. Frenzied iguana bongo drumming. A rain of rabid hyenas from the sky. Stuff like that.”
Larry left the insurance place feeling very dark indeed. And he did indeed partake in many dark deeds upon leaving that place, including cracking open a person’s head and feasting on the goo inside, planting evil watermelons in all the neighbourhood families’ houses, and getting all the governments of the world to come together and declare “Sexy and I Know It” by LMFAO to be the greatest song ever recorded. But he never managed to take his revenge on Poko the Iguana; until the day he died, he would burn with rage, with fury against that lizard, but revenge remained out of his grasp until the day he died, at the ripe old age of 48, at the hands of a different iguana, under completely different circumstances.
But that, my friends…is a tale for another time.
THE END
