They can apparently damage cars and people when they fall out of trees, so keep an eye upwards! The poor critters just stiffen up in the cold and drop to the ground.
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At least way down here Miami-way we haven’t had any iguana chillers this winter. Yet.
Last year we had a few cold overnights even down here and in the morning you’d see a bunch of them sitting there dazed on the sidewalk. They’re harmless, but they’re also real skittish. Even the big bulls won’t let a human get within 5-10 feet. When they’re dazed it’s sorta fun because you can get right up close to get a good look and even touch them. Their eyes will follow you, but otherwise they’re a rock except for shallow breathing. No way to know if they’ve got enough brain cells firing to be scared shitless at being touched, but they don’t literally shit, so maybe not.
Such fun.
Iguanas are an invasive species in Florida. Do people use the cold weather as
an opportunity to collect and dispose of these lizards?
They don’t shit?
A few do. It’s 100% legal to kill them on sight if done humanely. But although they are historically invasive, by now they are endemic. We could kill 10 million of them and not dent the population.
I personally have a significant philosophical problem with defining “invasive” as “wasn’t here in 1800.” IMO there’s nothing special about 1800.
They’re here now and that means de facto they are local and therefore native from this day forward.
Of course the do. Looks like dry goose shit. Sorta digested grass tootsie rolls.
I was making a joke about the idiom “scared shitless”. In the case of touching or badgering frozen iguanas they don’t shit in fear. So maybe they’re not scared, and maybe they are but are too frozen to do it. We can’t tell by the shit or absence of same.
I bet they’re good eatin’ too.
That’s not really what “invasive” means when we speak of invasive species. The adjective specifically denotes the damage to the natural ecosystem caused by the rapid proliferation of new species brought into the environment as an unintended side effect of human activities. The human activities responsible can be direct – like the introduction of rabbits to Australia or zebra mussels to the Great Lakes – or the result of anthropogenic climate change, like the northward migration of southern pests like bark beetles. These are not natural phenomena and not something to be taken lightly, because they cause environmental devastation in many ways.
But on the subject of iguanas in Florida, I had thought that my favourite philosopher Dave Barry had something to say about that, but on looking it up, it was actually Florida crabs he was talking about. Which may or may not be an invasive species, but his comments are noteworthy, to wit: 
Since we live in South Florida – geologically a giant swamp with shopping centers – we have these crabs who live in holes in our yard, and I do not care for them. Being from the North, I prefer yard critters that are furry and cute, whereas crabs look like body parasites magnified 1,000 times. During mating season, they become outright hostile. I’ll go out in my yard, and there, blocking my path, will be a crab, adopting a karate stance and waving his pincers menacingly to prevent me from mating with his woman.
"I don’t want to mate with your woman, " I tell him. “Your woman is a crab, for God’s sake.” But this only makes him angrier, because I think he knows, deep inside his slimy little heart, that I’m telling the truth.
Also, do not boop the snoot of brumating 'gators.
When I read this I immediately thought of the dreaded Australian Drop Bears, unusually large and vicious marsupials that inhabit treetops and attack unsuspecting people (or other prey) that walk beneath them by dropping onto their heads from above.
In Australia, don’t they fall up?
No, dummy, but when dropping they circle counter-clockwise, opposite to frozen iguanas in Florida.
How do they learn how to circle if their only time piece is the digital clock on their phone?
They don’t have to learn it, they just circle. It’s the Coriolis effect, everyone knows that. I learned it from the Simpsons.
They used the trees as sundials.
I knocked this out last time this happened:
