Larry,
Well,it looks like it was a very good day fishing!

Right now,up here in the north,I could only imagine what it is like to be warm.

Snow is so deep that I cannot go into the woods on my weekly squirrel safari and if the temps get into the teens,it is time to celebrate.

Just thinking about planning to go to FL to do some iguana hunting and snakehead fishing warms me up.

Wayne

Was at the Big Pine Key Flea Market today.
Iguana Souvenirs were at one of the booths.
The attached card is for the only licensed hunting guide in the Florida Keys.
He has access to a lot of acres and areas.



Souvenirs - drink cozy, tumblers and shot glasses with Iguana claws, rings with Iguana skin, etc.

Another more recent invasive...the East African rock lizard.

They were apparently brought in for people who collect exotics, got turned loose.

Environmentalists so far are not apparently concerned, but they do eat the smaller lizards, beneficial insect, and I suspect they raid bird nests.

Larry,
What about the Monitor Lizards I have been hearing about down there??

I understand they are cansidered invasive and fair game.

I hear that they have a nasty/toxic bite.

Wayne

Wayne--

Fortunately, have not heard of monitors nearby, not sure where they are.

Problem with all these critters are smartasses bring them into the country, legally or not, and sometimes let them go deliberately.

Don't know why officials allow stuff to be brought in that is not beneficial. Might be something about "rights."

Also do not know of any successful elimination of an exotic that has been put out.

The rock lizards seem to go up and down in population around here, with heavy rains and cold snaps apparently killing off their numbers.

Yes--I have read someplace that the pythons have been located as far north as Jacksonville. If they can adapt to the cold, there are lots of swamps and rivers in Georgia and South Carolina.

By the way--heard that a couple of dogs that mouthed a cold iguana during the recent cold got sick with botulism, one died and the other has chronic problems.

Larry

Not good.

Larry,
I would imagine that a lot of the invasive species,if not cooked can be toxic.

I understand that there is a frog down south that has a mucus membrane that is toxic and if a dog were ever to lick one if aid is not swift,can be fatal.

Wayne

Wayne--

I have heard about the frogs.

I think they were brought in to eat grubs that attack sugar cane roots.

But...they were not tame...spread out. A neighbor found one in their flowerbed a while back.

Larry

It's actually an African Toad called a Buffo. My folks lived in South Miami for 25 years, and when I would go home to visit, my brother and I would go in the big back yard with clubs and kill as many as we could find. They get quite large, and when they get provoked the puff up and secrete a white substance through raised glands on their back and head. Nasty things.

Pap

Pap--

Your info refreshes my memory about them.

The secretions from the glands are what is toxic or poisonous.

The closest thing we have seen in our yard was one of the gopher tortoises that was passing through the neighborhood.

It was on a bee line southbound, and I aided it to get under a nearby wire mesh fence, then across two very busy roads, and finally around a canal that it would have drowned in.

It continued on its straight-line course toward distant woods, that in the years since have all been cleared to bare ground awaiting houses to be built.

If that tortoise or others were there, they got bulldozed and buried as the land was cleared.

Larry