The Iguana That Posed for the Camera and Vanished

Omar Enrique Berdugo Cabeza was on his way to the sector Los Guardianes when he nearly stepped on her. There, right in the middle of the trail, a juvenile green iguana rested on the dry earth as though the path belonged to her — and in a sense, it did. The brilliant green of her body, that almost electric green found only in young specimens of *Iguana iguana*, made her both visible and somehow unreal among the leaf litter and tangled roots. Rather than flee, the iguana held perfectly still and allowed Omar to photograph her, one frame after another. Golden eye, crest held high, flawless scales. A forest-floor model who seemed to know exactly what she was doing. When she decided that enough was enough, she slipped between the bushes with such effortless discretion that there was no time to film her departure: the undergrowth simply received her and that was that, as though she had never been there at all. The encounter was documented in ten photographs and one video, at the coordinates of the trail leading to Los Guardianes. A chance sighting, the kind that reminds you that at Fundación Loros, you never quite know who might be waiting around the next bend.