Invasion

Well, they’ve done it again. Now the iguanas are moving from the mangroves to the newspapers. The New Day (El Nuevo Día), our local newspaper, reports that scientists are unsure about the effect of the swarming population of iguanas. Do they harm fauna / flora or are they just a nuisance, visually speaking? (The author of the article describes them iguanas as feas—ugly. Well, has anyone ever asked them what they think of us?)

The real question, he goes on to say, is what they eat. The answer, most people say, is that they are herbivores. Great—let them eat grass.

But wait—they have been seen to eat eggs. 

Presumably scrambled, though not cooked.

So now the question vexing scientific minds is how often? So guess what they did!

Trapped 'em and cut into their stomach!

Guys!

Look, what did the iguana ever do to you? 

I think of the story I read, once, of two African safari expeditions encountering each other. They’re both observing the giraffes, but in rather different ways. The Americans are getting as close as they dare, and snapping away with cameras. The British expedition is drinking tea and observing them from a distance. The British leader of the expedition can contain himself no longer.

“It’s so bloody disrespectful to the animals!”  

Good point.

Well, the news is that with one exception the gastrointestinal content of eviscerated iguanas contain only plant matter.

The exception?

Lapas.

Hunh?

OK, another word I don’t know. Turns out that lapas are limpets.

Hunh again….

And limpets, it turns out, are mollusks which stick tenaciously to ships. 

Oh!

Well, there is something fishy (hope you didn’t notice that) here. Are there limpets in Puerto Rico? Or is this one more case of a Spanish word that means various things, depending on region? (One local hotel is named La Concha—the conch. But Venezuelans, when they spot it, go into gales of laughter, and the men take salacious pictures of themselves in front of the sign. In Caracas, the conch is the nether region of ladies….)

Wasn’t I speaking of iguanas?

Right. Well, I looked it up—the iguanas, I mean. And it turns out I had it all wrong! I had written that there are two species of iguanas, the greater and the lesser. Now I find that there are many more species of iguanas, including our very own Mona Island Iguana, which inhabits, very properly, Mona Island, midway between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

I’ll save you the trouble of looking it up….

Wow! An iguana wearing camouflage! Often called the rhinoceros iguana, because of the bump on its nose. Here, you see it better.

Well, this iguana bears the name Cyclura cornuta stejnegeri.

Stejnegeri?

Well, one of the nice things about NOT using the computer to cruise Internet porn sites is that you have time to look things up. So who was Stejneger?

A Norwegian! Born in Bergen, emigrated to the states, worked in New York, and came to Puerto Rico. Discovered the Cyclura cornuta and stuck it in his book, the classic Herpetology of Porto Rico.

Yup, that’s Porto Rico. The gringos changed our name when they invaded us.

So of course I had to read about Stejneger. But really, what stuck with me most was not the biography but the image. Here he is….

Looking at it, one imagines him dressed just as above on the searingly hot island of Mona. And would he be trapping the Cyclura cornuta? And cutting into their stomachs?

No way!

It’s so bloody disrespectful….