Lizard Display

Yep...that's a very common lizard in Florida. It's called a brown anole:



He was an invasive species from Cuba decades ago - and they actually have been killing off the native green anole (competing for food). But lately he's actually beginning to get pushed out by a few new species, including the fast-populating Northern Curly-Tail lizard:



The curly-tails are quite larger than the anoles, and pretty fast too - and are voracious eaters.

Then again, down here in South Florida, we have an even larger invasive species that has been populating even faster than the northern curly tail...the green iguana:



These are even larger, by several orders of magnitude - they can grow 6 feet in length! They are only herbovores, so they aren't dangerous to people, except by a defensive whip of their long, spiky tail. But they love to eat flowers, and are ruining gardens all over town!

These are all taken in my backyard, BTW. Lots and lots of lizards back there!

BTW - good catch getting him with his neck extended. They do that to get the ladies for sure...along with the little push-up displays that they do. They're fun to watch!

I photographed one at Downtown Disney trying to run the sidewalk gauntlet - there were birds waiting on all the posts to snag them when they came out in the open. After some post-processing, I called it 'Shadow of Death':

 

Here's one from my honeymoon in Riviera Maya

Big ol' sucker... from Mayan Ruins in Tulum.

 

Yep...the green anoles can do that - they can go into shades of brown or greys and even reddish. The brown anoles seem to just lighten or darken their diamond patterns on their back - they don't have the color-changing range of the native greens. I personally love all lizards - always have. As a kid, we'd make the anoles bite our ears and wear them to scare the girls...they hang on forever! Unfortunately, the green anoles are really getting wiped out - I used to have hundreds all around my yard growing up down here - now I'm lucky to see one a year. But brown anoles practically cover the yard.

We also have a common lizard down here, that many Florida visitors have come to recognize - the House Gecko. He's that pale greenish-tan, almost see-through lizard with the black eyes that comes out at night, usually next to outdoor lights, clinging to the roof or walls of the house. During the summer, I get 2 or 3 in the house a month - usually the tiny babies...I'll notice this tiny movement on my ceiling while watching TV, and sure enough - baby house gecko. I've gotten pretty good at catching them - usually by putting my open palm in front of them with one hand, then going to grab them from behind with the other hand. They always run to the open hand, because it looks like a safe hiding spot - gotcha! I let them go outside, so they can go on eating bugs!

Personally, I love them. Of course, I don't keep much of a garden at my house, so they don't cost me anything! I remember getting so excited the first time I saw one here, after cruising in the Caribbean and always loving them in Mexico, Aruba, Cayman, etc. I chased it everywhere trying to catch it (I was 15)...but they're quite fast. And it's not all hate - for a while, my town was sort-of proud of them - they were even proposing about 10 years ago that one of our new bridges over the Intercoastal waterway be built with iguana statues at the entrance gables, making them a tourist attraction. But the wealthy who were seeing the iguanas the most (the invasion started along the port, probably from some stowaways on a ship, and they settled in the intercoastal waterway system in Boca Raton where they bred profusely in our warm climate - and guess who lives on the waterways with their big mansions...The RICH!) complained loudly about their ruined flower gardens and the waste deposits left by the big lizards in their yards...and the love started to fade. When they started spreading west profusely over the past 10 years, the naturalists began to speak up about the damage they would cause to the Everglades ecology when thy got out there, so they gathered even more enemies. Some efforts to cull them and trap them didn't keep up with their unbelievable breeding rate, so they made it to the Everglades - and pretty much every other patch of water to be found in Boca Raton - and have since been spreading into neighboring cities too. They can be found from West Palm Beach to the Keys now.

And the latest wave seems to be education - trying to teach people to live with them, since they are obviously here to stay. They try to convince people that despite their fearsome look, they are not deadly or even harmful...and they try to teach people how to plant iguana-proof gardens and landscaping. It's getting better - though there are still trapping and culling efforts in private neighborhoods and city waterways, for the most part people have just started to accept their presence. And as I said - some of us love them! I was absolutely thrilled when they started arriving in my backyard. As it is, I encourage all wildlife to come to my yard - the tamer city-wise animals I feed (the ones already used to being fed - so I don't damage truly wild animals!), like squirrels, raccoons, possum, blue jays, blackbirds, cranes, and storks. The more 'wild' animals I just enjoy watching - fox, snakes, lizards of all types, and the occasional exotic bird. I do sometimes feed the northern curly-tailed lizards though (when I go in my pool, and find a beetle or flying ant bobbing on the surface, I flick it out of the pool in the direction of one particularly fat little curly-tail I've come to name Larry - the guy in the picture above - he trots over immediately and eats it up...and keeps watching me in case I find more. He's almost like a trained lizard!).

Thanks...he was one of the more neon ones. He was probably a teenager as far as iguanas go - he was about 2 1/2 feet to 3 feet in length, so he hadn't really developed his thick neck ridge and all his spikes, and his color was much more vibrant green. The adults to get much duller, and much spikier too! Here's an adult one around here:





He was about a 5 1/2 footer.

Yeah, there are some benefits and some downsides to living so close to a swamp - we have a Noah's Ark of things roaming through or living in our backyard...and some of them would definately scare some people! I grew up down here from age 7 to 17...the formulative years for a boy...so I became quite the 'Steve Irwin' type - I was always grabbing snakes, lizards, skunk, possum, turtles, etc and bringing them home. My grandmother tolerated it - allowing me to keep 12 turtles and a raccoon as a pet in the screened patio.

We actually don't see venemous snakes too often in the residential areas - mostly the rat snakes, grass snakes, racers, and indigos. The poisonous stuff has been pushed further west mostly. The big ones to look out for in Florida are the coral, the moccasin, and the rattlesnake. Though deeper in the Everglades, we've got another invasive species breeding very well and expanding it's presence - the burmese python! Too many pet releases into a climate much like their own at home meant the snakes felt immediately at ease, and eventually a couple found eachother. Now, naturalists spot them each year, and note their expansion. Do a google search for 'alligator versus python' to see a crazy picture from the Everglades to illustrate why they are nervous about the python population - noone is sure who will end up being the apex predator!

 

Yes...the Bufo toads. We are just getting into their season now, as the summer approaches! Soon, those big, fat guys will be sitting along the rim of my pool at night, croaking away!

I think the person who figured that out probably died later - he must have tried to lick everything he saw, and eventually came upon something that didn't want to be licked.