KEYNOTER (Marathon Key, Florida) 26 January 05 Island rounds up iguanas (Alyson Matley)
But it's Gasparilla, not the Keys - at least for now
If Monroe County residents aren't careful, we could have our own night of the iguana.
Ask the residents of Gasparilla Island, an island southwest of Punta Gorda where some 600 humans are supposed to cohabitate carefully with the animals in the local wildlife refuge.
Recently, however, the invasive exotic iguanas have become part of the local fauna. By the best estimate, there are 3,000 feral reptiles on the island - that's five iguanas to each human.
Lee County officials have been wrangling with ways to round up the rampant reptiles, which have seemingly populated the Keys in just the past few years, just as we've wrestled with gathering up our feral fowl.
"We had originally contracted with a group," Lee County Commissioner Bob Janes said. "But they only caught six babies."
He added that the commission was nonplussed by its plan to "resocialize" the critters and sell them to the public for pets.
Now the plan is to work with Florida Gulf Coast University.
"What they do is eat the turtle eggs and all sorts of things," Janes said. "Now they're eating native species and they have no enemies. They also crawl into people's attics and the crawl spaces of their homes. We're really looking at it as a control issue."
Insight into Key West's chicken problem might help Lee County deal with the scaly monsters.
While Assistant City Manager John Jones became the chicken point man, Key West City Manager Julio Avael seems to have plagues of animals following him.
Avael, who hired official city chicken catcher Armando Parra, a barber by trade, once was county manager in Lee, where iguanas now rule the roost.
Although there were some ups and downs - including vandalized chicken traps and other chicken catchers who felt it was unfair competition - the chicken roundup program is deemed a success by city officials.
Eventually, Parra became a private entrepreneur.
"Now we just refer people to the chicken catcher if they have a problem," Avael said. "We haven't had one complaint since he began working independently, and it works a lot better for [the city]. Chasing down chicken complaints is a lot of work."
As for those island iguanas, Janes is not sure how they're going to approach the actual thinning of the population, since they are somewhat harder to catch than chickens.
"I don't know if they're going to do it per critter or what," he said. "You almost have to drag them out of their holes."
Avael expects that iguanas could be the next invasive species to take the limelight in the Keys, though he says Key West isn't seeing the worst of it.
"It's already a problem in the rest of the Keys," he said. "Give it another year and it'll be a problem in Key West, too."
Perhaps it's time the city advertises for a local lizard catcher. Better yet, a roundup. They eat them in Central America, you know.
Island rounds up iguanas