The Vamoose

This is a mariguana (Latin name: cannabis galapagos). He is much like an iguana but is twisted at both ends, has a pungent smell, and his nose is nearly always alight.

He has a strange behavioral ritual: His eyes become bloodshot as his breathing pattern becomes irregular.* He will sit and stare at a sunset for hours, occasionally emitting his mating call: "Ooooh-woww." Mariguanas will laugh at anything, including Cheech and Chong albums and late-night reruns of Gilligan's Island. They move in a slow, deliberate shuffle and often have great difficulty remembering what it was they started out to do.

A hungry mariguana will eat anything in his path. We saw one consume, with no apparent ill effect, a whole box of vanilla wafers, a bowl of radishes and a ketchup sandwich.

As a mariguana ages, his ash gets longer, until finally, at death, there is nothing left but the dark stub of his tail, about the size of a common house-hold insect. The young may stash these corpses in a secret common grave, but will often swallow them under stress.

*He will take a long, deep breath--and hold it.