On 4/8/2014 12:59 PM, wrote:
On Tue, 08 Apr 2014 10:57:34 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:


We were having lunch at the Monkey bar yesterday and someone was talking
about the iguana and monitor lizard invasion. Have you seen them in your
neighborhood?

===

You were here in CC? If so, stop by and say hello. Maybe we can
round up Gregg also.

One G Greg

The Monitors are mostly down in the SW end of town near the Spreader
Canal as I understand it.
My wife ran into a 4' monitor in a house she was building in Crown
Colony (South Ft Myers). She whacked it with a broom and it ran away.
I think the iguana are up in the north end of the Cape, coming in from
Boca Grande where they are thick.


We're in the SE just off the river between
the two bridges. I've never heard of Iguanas here but we do seem to
have a bumper crop of Geckos this year.

Do you mean Anoles? (the regular lizard you see running around the
yard)
Geccos are the ones you see at night with the big toe pads, usually
very pale white.

The main enemy of the anole is Herons and Egrets. If you have a lot of
them hanging around, you won't have as many lizards. A Cuban tree frog
and a black snake will take a lizard too.
We had a black snake in our screen cage for a while and the first
indication was that we did not have another living thing in there.
This guy
http://gfretwell.com/wildlife/Black%20racer.jpg
http://gfretwell.com/wildlife/Black%20Racer%202.jpg

I was kind of sorry to have to evict him but Judy said he had to go


One of those suckers made itself at home in the pool screen area of the
house we had in Florida. I tried coaching it out using the pool skimmer
pole. Damn thing attacked it. Finally got him out though.

Another time we came home from the store and I pushed the button for the
garage door opener. As it was opening I noticed a black racer under our
other car in the garage. I hate snakes.

Then there was the time my younger son who was visiting from the Navy
came in the house and told me about a snake that was out in our yard.
We looked it up in a snake book I had and he recognized it as a Coral
snake. But there's another non-poisonous snake that has similar black,
yellow and red rings called a scarlet king snake. He and I took the
golf cart out to see if we could find it and determine what it was.
I took a CO2 pellet gun along, just in case.

We found it. Sure enough, it was a Coral snake, the poisonous one.
I damn near cut it in half just below the head with 12 shots from the
pellet gun, standing 12 feet away. Even I was impressed. I used to
have a picture of it somewhere. I think H*a*r*r*o*l*d has seen it.

We also found a big rattle snake coiled up at our front door one day.
I shot it with the pellet gun but all it did was **** him off. Went to
Walmart the next day and bought a Winchester shotgun. (had to wait 3
days to pick it up though).

We also had those damn pigmy rattle snakes around, plus an alligator in
the little lake behind the pond and a family of Armadillos living under
the horse barn tack room.

Hmmmmm.... thinking maybe Massachusetts isn't so bad after all.