It’s official. I’ve turned some sort of corner and deep inside of me I am all Floridian. I can’t believe I’m about to say this or that is it even possible to feel such an emotion, but I think I miss the lizards.? I add the question mark because I’m still questioning it myself it’s so weird. A native New Yorker, I once hurled a lizard across a room on an iron because it freaked me out that much – I just wanted it out of my hands! Another time-and this one is really terrible, I feel bad enough and was very young and living in my first apartment by myself, so please don’t judge or send this link to PETA-I jumped on top of my bed with a mini ShopVac, threw the hose over the back of the bed where the lizard was, and shook it around until I heard a thwoop. I told you it was terrible, but the residual guilt may be leading to the fuzzy feelings I’m experiencing now. I have been actively seeking out lizards. I look for them every day and can always find one, but that’s it. I was bizarrely elated this morning to spot one without having to search. She was sitting on the brick pathway but hid behind a croton as I neared.
She’s a brown anole – a common lizard throughout Florida. Usually they’re everywhere around here - peeking through the windows, sunning on the pathways, and way too often creeping under the doors. There’s normally one perched on the mermaid’s head but not today.
There have been various articles written about the cold snap affecting Florida’s wildlife – reports on floating fish, bobbing sea turtles, huddling manatees and even falling iguanas but not much on the lizards. Exotic iguanas falling from the trees in Miami are bound to get attention, while the poor little lizards in our gardens are being ignored. Hopefully, they’re still sleeping and not…the other thing. Cold temperatures cause iguanas and lizards to fall into a deep sleep, and they lose their grip causing them to drop from trees, roofs, etc. The only article I could find directly related to lizards was about a woman from Pompano Beach blowing a hairdryer on a couple of lifeless lizards on her porch; they perked right up…if only I had known!
Hmmm….sorry to be the one to mention it but whenever I didn’t see lizards on my lanai or walkway, I looked for something higher on the food chain. And, usually found it slithering away.
Or, it could be the cold.
Well, thanks for that image! I’ll be looking over my shoulder and under my feet for the next few days. Although I do think the cold has a lot to do with the low lizard count. There was yet another article in this morning’s paper speculating that a 30-year old alligator living on Sanibel island died from the recent cold.
We’ve been missing them too. The odd part for me is that the Cuban or brown anoles that we’re talking about are actually exotic and displaced the Carolina anoles that we once had more of. Still, I hate it that they’re not back in their previous abundance. I guess in the end, Nature wins. Let’s hope the populations of manatees, snook &sea turtles catch back up soon.
I didn’t know that about the Carolina anoles – never even heard of them before! But good news for the manatees – although they’ve found over a hundred dead from the cold snap, there numbers were up from last year’s by over a thousand. Here’s the link: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20100121/ARTICLE/1211054