| | | quote | Originally posted by rinselberg:
"Florida man accused of killing iguana uses ‘stand your ground’ defense to try to get charge dropped"
Marisa Iati for the Washington Post; June 2, 2021."
Defendant's lawyer says "the iguana started it" but the prosecutor says there is surveillance video showing that the man was the aggressor.
The defendant is scheduled to appear in court on July 30.
Page link:
https://www.washingtonpost....a-stand-your-ground/
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When I started reading this... I had to figure out why the guy was getting arrested. They're considered invasive and the state of Florida encourages people to catch them (and eat them too). Looks like he tortured it, and that's why he's getting arrested.
That said, they're here to stay. I think they're originally from Cuba, and they can get absolutely massive. Unless you've lived in South Florida, people don't fully realize just how big they can get because they really aren't as pervasive in the rest of the state as they are in Fort Lauderdale and further south. There are some that are so gigantic, that they are often about 50-60 pounds. I mean, huge dog sized ones.
I've NEVER seen one attack a human either... so I have no idea what the guy is talking about. In the entire time I've lived in South Florida, I try desperately to get close to them just so I can pick them up and whatever... and they scurry off as fast as they can to one of the canals. I did have one land on me (fell from a tree) while I was mowing the lawn. It was a smaller one... he stayed there pretty much the entire time. I didn't even realize it until I saw this long tail going down my arm, and caught myself before I flipped out. I was able to walk across the street and say hello to my neighbor (jokingly) like there was nothing going on. He was like... "Uhh... do you need help with that?" hahah...
There are 1000s of little tiny lizards that you see throughout the state (and in Texas and most of the South East). But these iguanas are massive. We almost lost them all because of a huge freeze that happened maybe a decade ago? For almost two years I didn't see any more iguanas, they almost all died. But then I started seeing them come back again and now they're everywhere again.
When I lived in South Florida... I had all kinds of cool stuff in my backyard...
I had a bunch of the smaller iguanas (on one of my palms in the front):
We had parakeets everywhere... they'd screech and screech and eat the seeds from the Areca palms:
And then we had a Peacock that lived in my backyard. He would walk around the cul-de-sac and we'd feed him nuts, and then he'd go to sleep (like clockwork) every night in the huge live oak tree that was in my backyard. Most of the day though, he would basically hang out in my backyard doing his Liberache thing with his feathers...
