MIAMI HERALD (Florida) 16 November 07 Feeding frenzy: Iguanaman keeps 'brutes' well fed (Nicholas Spangler)

Iguanaman rides a motorcycle and comes out in the mornings along with the heat and the lizards themselves.

They crawl out of the sea grass to a white rectangle of concrete where a restaurant used to stand on the Key Biscayne beach.

''They've always been here,'' said Iguanaman, also known as Raul Perez, 53. ``I've been here nine years and there were always a lot.''

On very warm days there might be 40. Now he whistled and 15 of them flocked. They were lime green and brown, three feet long, weightily jowled, spikily crested, imposingly Jurassic. They were friendly enough, or hungry enough, to crawl up his arms. He would not stay long. He has a job, after all, as the gardener of the Silver Sands Beach Resort, restaurant-less since Hurricane Andrew, lately dwarfed by ziggurat condominium and hotel hulks on both sides. There is always grass that needs cutting, mulch raked or palm fronds collected.

This morning the iguanas would eat boiled potatoes and yucca, unseasoned, as the lizard palate seems to prefer. He retrieved the food from the pool cabana, in the process scaring the bejesus out of a tiny iguana that had no business in there anyway.

This started one day long ago with some bread. ''I threw it to one of the girls,'' he said.

Possibly they were not actually girls -- determining the gender of juvenile iguanas is a task best left to experts -- but Iguanaman calls all iguanas girls, even when they are huge and jowly and most probably males.

At first they were reluctant but eventually they ate the bread. They ate also, over the months and years, steak, white rice, plantains, chicken soup and vanilla ice cream, which was messy and not repeated.

Now they went for the starches. They gobbled and climbed his arms for more until there was none left.

There are those who might suggest this is not a good thing, environmentally speaking.

''We have a very big iguana problem out here,'' says Lainey Grossman, program director at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center in Crandon Park. ``They're not native to South Florida. It's the same situation we're having with boa constrictors in the Everglades.''

People buy them as pets; they grow to unmanageable size, or the humans fall out of love; released, with no natural predators, they multiply and invade.

''We've written a lot about this,'' says Nancye Ray, editor of the Key Biscayne Islander News. ``Some people don't like them because they get in their swimming pools, poop on their decks. They're big and if you scare easily, they can scare you. I happen to think they look kind of cool.''

This is the view taken by most Sands guests, who assemble poolside to watch the feedings. Only two were out this morning, sunning themselves lizardly, but they perked up to watch.

''We've been coming here 25 years, ever since we were married,'' said Margaret Burke, and her husband Steven nodded. ''Once, a group of people -- I think they were from Virginia -- were trying to trap them. We went to the office and said we would not come back again'' if the trapping continued. It stopped.

When the iguanas were fed, the Burkes went back to their room. Iguanaman cleaned off his knife -- iguanas prefer their meals cut small -- and said he was no iguana romantic.

''They trust me. They are grateful.'' But love? Iguanas do not love, he believes. ``They are brutes. Savages.''

Then Iguanaman went back to work, and at the end of the day he motorcycled back alone to his Little Havana efficiency, no pets allowed.
Iguanaman keeps 'brutes' well fed

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• FL Press: Iguanaman keeps 'brutes' fed - W von Papineäu, Mon Nov 19 10:14:12 2007