9 years to the day after getting him for my birthday, my pet ignuana, Frodo died. The first pet I've had die since I've had kids.

I kind of feel guilty that I didn't do more with him. I didn't walk him often (I had a leash for him) or take him out of his "cage" (a huge custom made monstrosity to fit him).

When I first got him, I was working on Galactic Civilizations, the game that launched Stardock as a "real company". He would lay on my arm (he was tiny then) while I coded. 9 years later, he was several feet long from head to tail and weighed...well quite a bit (10 pounds?).

He was a gentle thing. If you pet him, he'd close his eyes. When I'd spritz him with water he would raise his head up to make sure I got every part of him.

Frodo wasn't the brightest creature around. He regularly would try to eat himself, mistakenly thinking that a finger or tail was some sort of worm.

And one time he sat on a chair in my room calculating the trajectory and distance needed to jump from the chair onto the top of a file cabinet, a jump that he clearly was not capable of making. After some consideration, he leaped with all his might...right into the side of the cabinet and slid down the side of it in an almost cartoon way, bemused that he was unable to make the impossible jump onto the top of it.

Whereever you are, Frodo, I hope you're in a place with lots of hot rocks and trees to climb and all the food you could possibly want.