The Mating Game
Today in my backyard . . .
It was such a nice day. It was cool-ish and I could finally take some d-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-p breaths. The mugginess of south Florida keeps you in stasis of some kind for too long. You can’t breathe. You’re stuck in the house with your air conditioning running for months at a time. This causes a huge power bill which Florida Power and Light likes.
You could tell the humidity was low by the look and feel of the air. The sky had puffy clouds. It was bearable outside again. I knew this wouldn’t last long so I was going to enjoy it as much as possible. This season usually lasts until April or so.
It is the end of the rainy season although tomorrow it is going to rain again and all this week, but it will stop eventually.
When the rest of the U.S. has bad weather with snow and ice, we usually have wonderful sunny weather without humidity. It rains so much here that flooding occurs, drains don’t drain and overflow, toilets act up, and high tides near the beaches are higher than last year. There is too much water in south Florida but what do you expect. We live on the edge of the continent on a peninsula. We are just stuck out there surrounded by water.
Everything grows very quickly as well. Grass and bushes have to be mowed and cut every two weeks or less. It’s never ending. Also this is when the crustaceans come out more often. The rain and flooding washes out roaches, ants, snails, bedbugs, so your whole house could be infested. Such fun.
Where I live we are happy not to have many mosquitoes, flies or bees. That is really a good thing. When I lived in Atlanta I was constantly eaten up by mosquitoes. They haven’t found me here yet for some reason. Also, maybe they don’t smell my blood as much since menopause. Who knows! I’m just happy that I can sit outside in peace.
Also, where I live used to be part of the Everglades. We still get wild creatures here. There are alligators, snakes, beautiful water fowl, turtles, fish, ducks, and abalone and all are in the canals, lakes and rivers. It’s a wild country!
While I was sitting on the patio I was observing the iguanas that live in the tree near me. A big one was leisurely coming down. He was orange, brown, gray, and green. The orange says mating season.
He was haphazardly hooked with one toe here and a toe there between two trees that grew close together. I would say he is about 5 feet long and about 10 to 12 inches in circumference at the chest. Big boy! They don’t bother me so I don’t bother them, but they have come to my patio door to look in and I have caught them eating my pepper plants that I keep outdoors in hopes of getting a pepper eventually. Right?!
A female comes up to meet him and they sit quietly enjoying the day.
I usually am looking around in the yard and come across another large iguana. He is about 50 or so feet away. He is the same color and length as the one in the tree and he is shaking his head and showing off his wattle as they do when they are in alert mode. They may not see each other but I feel they know one another are around. The other comes down the tree and goes through the grass to feed.
The one in the grass looks at him for a long time then he heads in the direction of the tree iguana. They are now facing off then one turns away. They keep doing this dance twitching their tails and facing off for a while. They ran around a gray utility box, stop, face off, and one would run away. This kept happening for about twenty minutes.
The last thing I saw was they were chasing each other down the sidewalk on the other side of the house. Wow! I never saw that before!
Jo Ann Harris is an author, parent, book devotee, writer, copywriter, and film fanatic. She is an autodidact who learns about everything on her own. She grew up and worked in Atlanta, Georgia and lived there sixty years. She writes articles about love, hope, personal life stories, advice and poems. She is a published author with an article in Woman’s World magazine in October, 2017.