When it’s super cold in Florida, below 40 degrees, ignuanas will often drop from trees. The cold weather causes their cold-blooded bodies to temporarily shut down. The good news? Most are alive and tend to thaw out and go about their normal lives once it warms up.
I would personally like to formally apologize to the two frozen iguanas I encountered on my late-night walk this past weekend in Miami. I didn’t stop. I didn’t help. I just stared at you under a streetlight, lightly tapping one of you with my foot to see if you would move. That was metaphorically cold-blooded of me, as your literal cold-blooded nature has put you into a kind of real-life cryo-sleep as the temperatures in South Florida have dipped into the 30s, and now you and your iguana brethren are falling out of trees, as is the yearly tradition.
You were victims of a historic cold front. You hadn’t done anything wrong, though everything you do is technically “wrong” as you are an invasive species that poses “significant environmental and economic risks” according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. I guess that means I should feel okay with your collapse from a tree, and maybe even should celebrate your demise. But I don’t.
Why Iguanas Keep Falling Out of Trees in Florida?
This is a good example of life’s complexities. I can hold two opposing thoughts in my heart and mind. I can understand that your existence is hurting the local ecosystem, but I also don’t want to see a creature woven throughout the tapestry of my day-to-day life enter torpor, a state wherein you temporarily lose muscle control due to low temperatures, causing you to fall from trees.
By the time I saw you, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission had already issued an executive order temporarily allowing people to capture stunned iguanas without a special license. People were permitted to show up at FWC offices with dozens of you. I could have done that. I could have gathered you up in my car and dropped you off at one of their offices. But it was late. It was cold. I didn’t want to have to Google the address, then drive to that address with some iguanas in my car with the heater on, a heater that might warm up the iguanas, and now I’ve got live iguanas freaking out in my car as I’m trying to find what I imagine is a mailbox for iguanas.
So, I just left you there.
But maybe it’s for the best. They would probably kill you if I left you with them. It’s kind of a lose-lose thing. If you survived the torpor and the 11-foot drop from the tree onto the sidewalk, you would then wake up and continue wreaking havoc on the ecosystem. But there’s also this thing in me where I don’t like condemning things to death.
So, I’m sorry, you two. But maybe I’m not sorry. I don’t know. It’s a complicated situation. I just hope you make the best of what life you may have left, assuming you survived the fall only to warm up in the light of day, then presumably refreeze later that night and repeat the cycle for the duration of this cold front. I guess I want you to take advantage of this second chance at life that my inaction has offered you and try not to destroy South Florida’s ecosystem so much? That might be too much to ask, but just try, okay?
The post Countless Iguanas Are Falling From Florida Trees—Again appeared first on VICE.
