21 thoughts on “The New Invasion”

  1. This is a Monitor lizard right?

    An Australian Goanna is a monitor lizard.

    According to Crocodile Dundee you can EAT a Goanna. so I’m thinkin’ you should be able to a eat A Nile Monitor.

    But I’m bettin’ it’ll taste like….

    Mate!

  3. I’m not sure I want to eat any of them, going on Mick’s say so .

    And I’ll especially eschew those whose family could return the favor, like a Komodo Dragon. You can bet I won’t take off my shoes, while wearing white socks to enter their enclosure either, like Sharon Stone’s husband did a few years ago.

    Here’s a question, has anyone heard how the armadillo population has done in South Florida given these new, larger predators? I know when I lived down there, those little meat tanks were a pure nuisance.

    And I lived way up in Jacksonville.

  6. AH,
    the gators will eat the lizards? Or the armadillos?

    Or people who think every situation can be fixed by a regulation?

  11. I understand that a new flat-screen mutation has appeared that’s much thinner than the usual monitor lizard…

  12. As someone who used to do a lot of business with exotics, and would like to get back into it if the family finances allowed, I can say that no regulations will be very effective in preventing those of us that want to keep and show exotics from doing so. My former state of residence, NY, has some pretty stringent restrictions on venomous reptiles, but I never had any problems acquiring them.
    Prohibition of alcohol didn’t work, and a good case can be made that most restrictions on alcohol don’t work either. Most of the people that keep exotics are pretty well educated, and they know how to evade the laws if they want to. Prohibition of exotics will probably be just about as successful.
    I gave up on the larger species, such as the savannah monitors, iguanas, and the larger pythons simply because they keep growing, and growing. At some point, one either has to kill them, keep them in large rooms or outside(not so good in NY’s snow belt) or abandon them. Here, education is the key, and fans of exotics seem to be doing a pretty good job of it, unlike even 5 years ago.

  13. Andrea,

    Yes, they have a law now, but they needed that law 20 years ago, before they became a problem.

  14. Don,

    Yes, folks often put their self interest above that of society and its laws. Look at the plague English Sparrows have become just because someone wanted to be able to see the birds Shakespeare wrote about flying around New York City.

  17. Are you people suggesting that we discriminate against Monitor-Americans? That would be wrong.

  18. Well, Thomas, I’ll be sure to tell the Doctor next time he swings by in the Tardis that we need to pay 1991 a visit.

    Seriously, this is all you’ve got? “Oh, I meant that regulations were needed earlier, yeah, that’s the ticket!” Did you think I would fall for that? Are you high? (Note to self: have my Tea Party minions adjust the dosage of mind-altering drugs we’ve filtered into Matula’s water supply. We don’t want him to go off yet — not until Der Tag.)

  19. Wonder about the cold tolerance of the new lizards. Remember a couple years ago when a very cold snap in Florida had iguanas raining out of the trees at about the time the locals were setting up a hunt to eradicate them? Best of all, they tasted like chicken.

    Florida goes thru the invasive species panic on a regular basis. I am old enough to remember the walking catfish scare. Cheers –

  20. It’s called “global climate change’. Relocation of species. Deal with it. Guess they didn’t get the memo that it wasn’t real.

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