ORONO — In the 21 years he’s been working for the Penobscot County Sheriff’s department, Galen Adams thought he had seen everything Maine’s forests had to offer, from wildfowl to bears and deer.

That changed Friday afternoon, when on a routine stop, Adams found a 3-foot iguana along the roadside in Passadumkeag.

It’s a short story with a long tail. Around 1:30 p.m., Adams was on the East Ridge Road when he noticed a logging truck stopped beside the road. Slowing to see if the truck driver needed help, Adams noticed a raincoat on the ground alongside the road. His first thoughts were that a body lay underneath.

The excited trucker told Adams that what was under the jacket was like nothing he had seen before. Peering under the coat, Adams was relieved to find that it wasn’t a body. Adams was nonetheless surprised to see a scaly, grayish green reptile underneath.

“I’ve seen them in Florida but never in the Maine woods,” Adams said later Friday afternoon.

With little effort, Adams was able to apprehend the lizard and finding no suitable caging, put him in the trunk of his patrol car. He covered the lizard with some of the carpeting used to line the inside and began to ponder about what to do next.

Adams joked that he thought the large lizard might make an interesting mascot for the sheriff’s department, but a call into the office found a less-than-warm reception for the coldblooded iguana. With a smile, Adams said Chief Deputy Glenn Ross had made it abundantly clear that the iguana would not be a welcome addition to the department.

First stop was to the Bangor Humane Society on Mount Hope Avenue. There Adams was told the Humane Society couldn’t take the reptile because the organization only handles domesticated animals. Adams was then referred to the Bangor Animal Shelter, but through a subsequent phone call he found out the shelter also doesn’t take iguanas.

So the sheriff’s deputy from Levant was left again pondering what to do with the iguana.

Luck was with him that day, and the Humane Society referred Adams to Starlene Sewall who operates a licensed wildlife rehabilitation center and animal shelter from her Orono home.

He hopped back into his car and headed to Orono. Once there, Adams thought it would be a simple matter of opening his trunk, grabbing the iguana and turning it over to the proper authority, Sewall, who had a small cage already waiting. It wasn’t quite that easy.

You see, besides enjoying basking under the sun, iguanas are notorious escape artists. It took a few moments of scouring the trunk before the iguana was found snuggly nestled between the rear wheel well and the wall of the trunk. Only a few inches of the iguana’s tail gave the little Houdini away.

With a little perserverance, Adams was able to gently pull the iguana from the security of the cramped space and put him into the cage.

Believed to have escaped from a home or been abandoned, the thin iguana has been rescued from starvation and the recent mild Maine temperatures. And at least for now the iguana will join another displaced iguana and a half-dozen pot-bellied pigs, some dogs, chickens, geese, ducks, raccoons, llamas, ponies, fancy birds, goats, pea hens, and quails in Orono in what Sewall calls the Second Chance Animal Shelter.