Off on a tangent

Gopher Tortoise. Ain't he cute?

Checking on my guavas today, I noticed I've got bananas! Yay! Not many, but coming from a tree I take absolutely no care of, I'd say it's pretty good to be getting any.

My sister, who lives in Broward Co., took this picture today. She didn't know that the cute little things hanging out on her rose bushes were baby iguanas. They are cute, but not native and very invasive.

South Florida has an over abundance of non-native critters, the iguana being one. They have been in the news alot lately. The only way to really control them is to kill them. Now, I'm an animal lover, but there are some who may doubt that when I say I agree about killing the iggys. There are too many of them and there is just nothing else to do. Sure nature helps a bit by sending us cold snaps once or twice a year (they don't survive too well in extreme cold temps). But something else needs to be done. It would be nice if a vet volunteered to euthanize all iguanas brought to him, but that's not ever going to happen. It's a sad thing that has happened just because people bought those cute little babies (like my sis has in her yard), but then when they got too big decided they couldn't keep them anymore and turned them loose. Bad move.

Iguanas, parrots and parakeets, various lizards and geckos, boas and pythons... I think the pet industry really needs to be better regulated. The state has taken steps, at least as far as large snakes go, but I don't know if anything's being done about the other problems we have.

And I've learned our bear population has grown tremendously in recent years. Could they be thinging of possibly having a bear season? Most likely. The sad thing is, it's not the bear's fault. It's ours. South Florida's continued building and growth really sucks for our native creatures. More and more bear encounters are happening because we have moved into their territory.

I have hunters in my family. Most animal lovers think bad things about hunters. I do not. Hunters are actually some of the most environmentally conscious people around. They are also some of the biggest animal lovers. I do not like people who hunt for the "thrill" of it. Hunt for food. Eat what you kill. Honor the life you've taken. If we didn't have hunting seasons, our deer population would be horribly over populated and sickly. Hogs are not even native here, but we don't go out and allow random killing of them. We have hog seasons. We have turkey season. Rabbit, too (oh, I could never eat a rabbit!). And alligator season! At one time, gators were protected here. As a result, their population exploded and now no body of water in Florida is exempt from them...including swimming pools. So we now have a heavily regulated gator season, which is based on a lottery for a permit. It hasn't hurt their population at all. I love alligators. And...they taste pretty good, too. Would I hunt one? Nope. I have no desire to ever hunt anything. But I am not against it. There are very valid and good reasons for hunting and I support them 100%.

Now, if I was in the Everglades and came across a python, I would kill it without a second thought. (and I have a particular fondess for snakes and have owned 2 pythons)

Wow...what was the point of this post? I think I got off tangent a bit! Anyhoo...if you have an exotic pet, wherever you live, never EVER release it into the wild!

I gotta go make dinner now. 'Night All!

Iggy's Abound

These guys are taking over South Florida. This one was at Fairchild Gardens in Coral Gables, but they can be found in just about any park around. Green Iguanas. Really cute when they are little, and cheap to buy. Then they grow up. They get big. And they can be mean. So the idiots who buy them (without any prior research into what they're getting) decide they can't handle them anymore and simply release them in the nearest park. I D I O T S.

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!

Mystery Lizard

Friday I walked out of my office at lunchtime and spotted this young iguana hanging out catching some rays...

Then some movement caught my eye on a nearby oak tree. This is what I saw. At first I thought it was a bearded dragon because the overall shape kind of seemed to match, but the coloring is all wrong.

No spikey beard, but it does have a sweet face like a dragon does.

I couldn't get any closer. This guy is very skittish! We played ring-around-the-oak-tree for about 10 minutes just so I could get these shots.

I checked on the FWC website, which is usually pretty good about exotics, but I couldn't find anything like this.

Note: After emailing pics to a vet friend of mine, I do believe this may be a female agama agama. Not native at all and since there's a male redheaded agama in the area, I imagine it will start breeding soon, if it hasn't already. At least they're not as large as the iguanas and most likely not nearly as destructive.