Night of the iguana? Well, that could be just about any night in South Florida as the pesky reptiles breed and overtake everywhere from Miami to the Keys.
SUNNY ISLES BEACH — Perched in trees and scampering down sidewalks, green iguanas have become so common across South Florida that many see them not as exotic invaders, but as reptilian squirrels.
Native to Central and South America, green iguanas that escaped or were dumped as pets have been breeding in the Miami suburbs and the Keys for at least a decade without making headlines like other voracious invasive reptiles, such as Burmese pythons or black-andwhite tegu lizards.
They’ve been considered mostly harmless because they eat plants instead of native animals. But their burrows undermine seawalls, sidewalks and levees, and they eat their way through valuable landscaping as well as native plants. Their droppings can be a significant cleanup problem, as well as a potential source of salmonella bacteria, which causes food poisoning.
Compared with elusive pythons in the Everglades, iguanas are easy to spot. They can grow to more than 5 feet long, and they like what draws people to Florida: nice landscaping, waterfront views, swimming pools and sunbathing.
One iguana even stopped a first-round tennis match at this year’s Miami Open by crawling over a scoreboard onto the court. German player Tommy Haas snapped a selfie with it, but his Czech opponent Jiri Vesely complained to the umpire that he couldn’t concentrate. An ATP Tour video shows the umpire telling Vesely, “It’s not a dangerous animal.”
Trapper Brian Wood easily caught three iguanas one recent afternoon, each about 3 feet long, basking on a condominium’s seawall in the resort community of Sunny Isles Beach. Using a long fishing pole, he looped wire around their necks, reeled them in and placed them in a narrow, metal cage.
Janet Sarno, board chairwoman at King’s Point Imperial Condo, hired Wood because the number of iguanas — big adults and bright green babies — hanging around the building’s pool has been growing despite residents’ attempts to chase them away or block their entry.
“Maybe 10 years ago, you might see one or two on the seawall. Now there’s 20 at a time coming out. There’s just too much,” she said.
The iguanas dig under the seawall and first-floor patios, climb trees to reach second-