"On the third day of the iguana plague..."

November 30, 2014 8:29 PM

The Iguana in the Bathtub by Anne Doten [New York Times] Hard lessons on a cold day in Florida.

"When the temperature dipped below 40, iguanas started falling from the trees. Small, sleek green iguanas; big iguanas as long as four feet from snout to tail, scales cresting gloriously from their heads; orange-and-green iguanas, their muscled, goose-pimpled arms resolving into sharp claws. Iguanas were everywhere: in the bushy areas surrounding canals, on sidewalks, in backyards, lying helpless among the fallen, rotting fruit of mango and orange trees."

posted by Fizz (19 comments total)

My mil in Florida tells the story of her critter-loving neighbor who picked up three large hibernating iguanas and put them into her mini-van with the heat cranked.
She made it halfway home before she had to deal with three large, very animated iguanas trying desperately to escape.
posted by Floydd at 8:40 PM on November 30, 2014 [14 favorites]

She made it halfway home before she had to deal with three large, very animated iguanas trying desperately to escape.

This is an amazing sitcom that just hasn't happened yet.
posted by Fizz at 8:43 PM on November 30, 2014 [11 favorites]

I owned a large iguana when I lived in West Virginia. One thing I learned is although they enjoy warmth immensely, they don't actually have an aversion to the cold. This can be a problem if you're trying to keep them alive.
posted by clarknova at 9:06 PM on November 30, 2014 [2 favorites]

“Can you get a towel?” he said. “I want to keep him warm.”

Ectothermic critters do not work that way. If the towel accomplished anything it would have been to delay his warming up from being in the house.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:21 PM on November 30, 2014 [7 favorites]

That was unexpected. Most stories about cold iguanas end, like Floyyd's, with the lizards reanimating in someones car or house and wreaking havoc.

This story reminds me of my grandmother, who told me about a neighbor she had when she lived in South Florida who hated the iguanas which were constantly eating the plants in her garden but didn't have the heart to kill them violently. Instead she would capture them and put them in her freezer until they just gave out. I don't know enough about reptiles to tell whether that's more or less humane than dispatching them with a shovel or a gun, but it's definitely much, much, creepier.
posted by bracems at 10:41 PM on November 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

My friend had an iguana. She, the iguana that is, though both were she, was about 4 feet in length and suprisingly heavy, my friend was maybe just over 5 feet in height. I was never climbed by my friend. She had long creepy toenails on all four feet, the iguana that is.

The iguana was also part Golden Retriever or something because when you came to their house as soon as you walked through the door she would charge at you holy crap enthusiatic iguana style and despite your freaking out and having been warned, would climb the front part of your person, claws clicking rapidly in and out of your jeans, then shirt, across your squinched face and then onto your head. Then the iguana would pivot so she was looking in the same direction as you, perch, and, goddamit, wag her scaly tail on your neck.

"That means she likes you." my friend said.
posted by vapidave at 11:24 PM on November 30, 2014 [39 favorites]

I don't know why, but the ending reminds me of the final scene in Burn After Reading.
posted by Dr Dracator at 11:55 PM on November 30, 2014

Iguanas are an invasive species. Maybe better to let the cold get some of them.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 4:07 AM on December 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

I now have to purposely avoid business trips to Florida, as I tend to miss important meetings being outside squee'ing at tiny lizards. It's a problem, I know.
posted by scruss at 4:41 AM on December 1, 2014 [6 favorites]

The iguanas lay on the ground as if they were dead, a rhapsody of corpses dotting the landscape like musical notation.

The simile lay on the page as if it were a gilded plastic sword, a parody of a knife distorting the paragraph like a child's toy trying to cut a ham.

I have never seen a plague of comatose iguana, but they are not corpses. They might look dead: there's no need to say so twice within five words. They are severely unlikely to embody any of the attributes of a rhapsody, and... well, I guess notes shorter than a semibreve have tails but there, I posit, the resemblance ot randomly scattered lizards to a page of Beethoven ends. They both have scales?

Every writer striving for imperial prose sometimes just gets the purple. Part of the game... but I thought the NYT of all people still had an editor or two dotted about. Or have they all fallen, frozen, from the dense arboreal Manhattan canopy?
posted by Devonian at 5:26 AM on December 1, 2014 [18 favorites]

One thing I learned is although they enjoy warmth immensely...

We had a big one, and my father conjectured a way to avoid cleaning the diorama/cage. Periodically fill a tub with warm water, and place the iguana in there. It would evacuate itself immediately, and the water could be dumped more easily than cleaning the cage.

Our iguana had three speeds: motionless, eat, and run away.
posted by StickyCarpet at 5:48 AM on December 1, 2014 [2 favorites]

Never saw an iguana plague when I lived in South Florida but I did walk out of the house to the car once and had to step around a number of very alive, flopping catfish all over the yard.

The walking catfish, plus the topless check-cashing stores, are the things I remember most vividly about that weird fucking state.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 6:30 AM on December 1, 2014

Or have they all fallen, frozen, from the dense arboreal Manhattan canopy?

Yes, the hiring freezes eventually got them all.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:32 AM on December 1, 2014 [6 favorites]

The walking catfish, plus the topless check-cashing stores, are the things I remember most vividly about that weird fucking state.

Strip Club/Pancake Houses, plastic surgery commercials on the radio ... Weirdest road trip ever.
posted by Buttons Bellbottom at 6:43 AM on December 1, 2014

plastic surgery commercials on the radio ... Weirdest road trip ever.

As an aside, one of the reasons radio seems to contribute so much to the weirdness of road travel is that it's the only time you're likely to listen to unfamiliar radio stations. Or in my case, listen to the radio at all. Local radio is and always has been one of the more freakish things in America. If you were to poke around the dial cluelessly while driving in your own town you'd probably be nearly as alienated -- only your familiar surroundings would diminish the weirdness.
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:09 AM on December 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

I had an iguana when I was younger. Someone found it outside in Edmonton, Alberta, a particularly inhospitable environment for iguanas. I usually left the cage open so it could run around the room and crap on my bed.

One Sunday morning my mom came into my room to make a final last-minute appeal for me to come to church with her. As she was standing at the foot of the bed, the iguana jumped right up her skirt and started climbing her leg. The claws! I think she jumped about the same distance, adjusted for relative body length.
posted by sneebler at 7:40 AM on December 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

Uh, these are not tiny lizards. The ones we saw living around the abandoned bridge to the Keys were like 3-4 feet long. In Miami you can see iguanas the size of a cat swarming all over the seawalls.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 8:04 AM on December 1, 2014

A friend of mine had iguanas and geckoes as pets. They stink.
posted by Nevin at 8:10 AM on December 1, 2014

One of my friends had a 3 foot iguana in college. One day I walked into his dorm room and the iguana was perched on his head like a hat, with the claws on all four feet dug into his scalp and whipping him in the face with its tail. He was screaming "Get it off! Get it off!" at his roommate, who was cowering in the corner, too afraid to move or scream.

But yeah, they're all over the Florida Keys, and they're gigantic.
posted by Ham Snadwich at 9:05 AM on December 1, 2014 [2 favorites]