You can take the GRITS out of Florida, but you can't take Florida out of the GRITS!

Saturday, January 5, 2008

It's raining lizards!

I read in the Miami Herald yesterday that, the other day, when it got down into the 30s here, that iguanas and various other lizards were dropping out of the trees! They even had a picture of a poor, frozen iggy laying on the grass, belly up.

The cold doesn't kill them. Well, it can, but it has to be much colder than that. The cold causes their bodies to slow down, to lose control of all their muscles and fall into a deep sleep. Now, iguanas like to sleep in trees, so when this "hibernation" happens, they simply fall out of the trees. As soon as it warms up a bit, they wake up and carry on.

The article talked about this happening on Key Biscayne, but I also know it happened at Matheson Hammock. My hub works there and saw several iguanas and Cuban anoles (aka Knight anoles) lying around. People were even running them over. Yuck...poor things!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

At the shed at work on Thursday I noticed a lizard that wasn't moving. Normally they run, right? So, I bent down to nudge it and nothing. It's gone now, but I wish I could have moved itinside to the shed!

R.Powers said...

The nice thing about extreme cold is it's ability to put a hurtin' on the tropical exotics invading FL.
I'm hoping the brazillian pepper bushes in the mangroves took a hit.

Unknown said...

My husband was reading this story to me this morning. We had a good chuckle. :)

Pamela said...

I saw that article in the news.
it made me sad.

Anonymous said...

I saw this on the internet news services. That would be a wierd site to see. Us lizards stay inside during the winter...

kitten said...

Thanks for the info on the Iguanas. My son had 2, but I don't we did a grat job raising them.

Anonymous said...

I don't think i have ever seen a Iguana not in a pet shop but interesting info .