An emergency card for a green iguana exists for one moment: you are unreachable, something has gone wrong or the power is out, and a neighbor, sitter, or relative is standing in front of a large, strong lizard they do not know. Everything on the card is chosen for that reader, someone reading under pressure, and anything that does not help that person in the first minute does not belong on it.
Fix the Card's Contents and Keep Them Identical Everywhere
The card carries a set list of contents, the same on every copy: the iguana's name and a clear photo, its diet and feeding notes, handling warnings, the named people who are confident handling it, the vet's contact, and the owner's contact. Resist adding more. A card that tries to hold the iguana's whole history gets read halfway and set down, while a card with exactly those six items can be read fully in under a minute.
Write each item in plain, direct language. The photo should show the iguana's size and coloring clearly, because a helper who has never seen it needs to be sure the animal in front of them is the animal on the card. Contacts are written as entries a stranger can act on: the vet's number listed under the practice name, and the owner's number under the owner's name, so no one has to guess whose phone a string of digits belongs to.
Write the Diet and Handling Lines for a Nervous Reader
Feeding notes get two or three short lines: what the iguana eats, roughly how much, and what it must not be given. Name the staple greens and the feeding time of day, and note anything in the kitchen that looks like food to a human but is wrong for an iguana. A helper feeding from the card should never have to improvise a menu.
Handling warnings deserve the same bluntness. State that the iguana is strong, that its tail can whip and its claws scratch, and how a confident handler supports its whole body when lifting. Note the situations that change its temper, such as breeding season wariness, in a single honest line. Then list the named people who are confident handling it — actual names from your household or nearby — so the stranger knows exactly who to call for hands-on help rather than attempting a lift they are not ready for. Anyone not named should be told, on the card itself, to feed and check water only and to leave handling to a named person.
Place Copies Where the Emergency Happens
A perfect card in a drawer nobody opens is decoration. Tape one copy to the enclosure itself, keep one in the kitchen where a helper naturally gathers information, and give one to a named handler to keep.
Review the card whenever anything on it changes: a new vet, a named handler who moves away, a diet adjustment, a phone number that changes. An out-of-date card is worse than a missing one in one respect — it sends a stranger confidently to the wrong number.
Keep a Backup With the Iguana's Records
The printed copies handle the emergency at home, and a filed copy handles the ones away from it. In KinsLe, Pet Passport is the iguana's records packet, and the emergency card belongs in it beside the diet notes and the handler list, so the card can be reprinted from the same file it was written from and updated in one place when a detail changes. Filing the printed card in the Pet Passport on KinsLe keeps a backup copy with the diet notes and vet contact, ready to reprint the day the original fades.