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Hernando Today

Iguana Invasion

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By JOHN HERBERT

Hernando Today correspondent

Published: May 2, 2008

Damage caused by iguanas includes eating valuable landscape plants, shrubs, trees, orchids and many other flowers. They also devour berries, figs, mangos, tomatoes and bananas. Iguanas do not like citrus fruits. The burrows they dig can undermine sidewalks, seawalls, and foundations. Iguana burrows next to seawalls can erode and eventually cause the collapse of those seawalls.

Droppings of iguanas litter areas where they bask. It's unsightly, causes odor, and is a possible source of salmonella bacteria, a common cause of food poisoning.

Adult iguanas are large, powerful animals that can bite, cause severe scratch wounds with their extremely sharp claws, and deliver a painful slap with their powerful tail."

So you've always wanted to be a bounty hunter? There might be a career for you in this tony little village anchoring Gasparilla Island, about a three-hour drive south of Hernando County.

Florida's premier subtropical playground of the super-rich and semi-famous, Boca Grande is being overrun with iguanas, the spiny reptiles that are so fast and such good swimmers that they may even surface to bite you on the unmentionables in the bathroom.

Anyone who's seen an iguana's sharp teeth knows they're not really household pets, although experts suspect that's exactly how the first pair arrived, probably from Mexico. When Boca Grande vacationers left at the end of their holidays, they most likely tossed out their iguana couple with the garbage. And Mother Nature took its course.

With seven miles of sandy beach facing the Gulf of Mexico, Gasparilla Island has witnessed a veritable explosion of wild iguanas since the 1980s. Animal control officers, once known simply as dog catchers, estimate there are at least 10,000 of the pesky creatures roaming the island, or ten for each adult resident.

That's not at all overestimating the infestation. A female iguana can lay as many as 75 eggs at a time, claims the Florida Wildlife Commission. Most of the green and black scaly iguanas are about two-feet long, but a full-grown male can measure six feet from teeth to tail. Just like humans, male iguanas can sport a beer belly as they age.

The prehistoric-looking iguanas chomp at anything that moves -- birds and ducks, small dogs and cats, gopher turtles and all kinds of nested eggs. They'll also eat insulation and devastate the most-carefully cultivated flower garden.

Iguanas have been known for leaving tracks of urine and feces behind walls, in air-conditioning vents and in attics. With their feces comes a risk of spreading salmonella. When it's chilly, they drop out of trees like the falling rain.

So far, island residents have applied equal amounts of vigilante justice and free enterprise to confront free-range iguanas. One senior lady, who doesn't look the part of a cold-blooded killer, has been seen riding around town in her golf cart (the most-used vehicle here) with a shotgun at her side. A property owner patrols his portion of Gasparilla beachfront with a rifle over his shoulder.

The local mom-and-pop hardware store has a hard time keeping up with the demand for the metal traps once used only for squirrels and miscellaneous big rodents. They have probably sold a hundred traps so far this year.

Boca Grande has now signaled its readiness to pay as much as $20 for each iguana trapped, shot and killed on the island. Someone will have to foot the bill: the local taxpayer. That'll be a challenge; Florida voted to slash property taxes earlier this year. Gasparilla Island's designation as a wildlife sanctuary will also have to be reworded.

The owners of the island's palatial homes (which would put former presidential candidate John Edwards' 28,000-square-foot chateau to shame) can certainly afford the iguana hunt. Boca's "iguana tax" is proposed to be .0462 mills, a $46 tax-hike for each million dollars of a beach house's taxable value, and to appear on local invoices as a "solid waste" levy.

That will average out to about $80-$120 extra on most Boca Grande taxes. That's an affordable amount; you don't set up shop in Boca Grande unless or until you've had time to accumulate a few multi-million-dollar trust funds. Taxes on Boca's beachfront property can run anywhere from $100,000 to $250,000 a year. The toll for the bridge from the mainland is $4.

Early vacationers had heady surnames like Du Pont, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Ford and Edison. The late Oscar-winning actress Katharine Hepburn was frequently spotted on a Boca tennis court. Members of the Bush political dynasty currently enjoy Boca's sun, fun and golf course.

Some Boca natives don't think the iguana problem is so great; a waiter told me tourists even arrive just wanting to see the iguana. "They're not pests," he said. "When I see them here, I just chase them out."

Tell that to Sarasota or Tampa residents across on the mainland. Sarasota has seen its first iguana traces and is ready to shoot the lizard-like creatures on sight. Most recently, a fat three-foot iguana slunk all the way to Tampa!

A regular columnist for Hernando Today, Herbert lives in Spring Hill.

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