We had two boats out that day. Mine was loaded up with a group of women who came all the way down from Texas, already fired up from a python catch the night before. The other boat had cops on it. I told the ladies they might have to bail them out. Turns out I wasn’t wrong, but we’ll get to that.
Florida had just come off a hard freeze, and everybody wanted to know the same thing: did it wipe out the iguanas? Short answer, no. Not even close. I’ve been running these canals hard, and between the freeze and the work me and my guys have been putting in, the population is definitely down in a lot of areas. But wiped out? Not a chance. The iguanas that were up in the trees took the worst of it. The ones with burrows, the ones that dug in deep, a lot of them made it through just fine. And they’re already back to causing damage. We pulled up to a stretch of embankment where the county had to come in over the past eight months, rip everything out, lay down cloth, small rock, and big rock, all because iguanas had eaten the whole bank away. Cost millions. And by the time we got there, the iguanas were already digging right back into it.
Right off the bat I’m teaching the ladies the number one rule: shoot them in the head. People hear that and they nod, but they don’t really believe me until they see an iguana take a hit somewhere else and just keep moving. They learned fast.
I also had two dogs running with us that day, Uzi and Trigger, both still young and working through their puppyhood. Uzi has been out with me almost every day. Trigger doesn’t get quite the same reps, and it showed. He got a little ahead of himself early on and caused a moment of chaos before we got things sorted. Trouble, one of my other dogs, more than made up for it. She tracked down a big male that had us working for a while, chased him under a fence, then came out the other side with him. Best catch of the day. She also got bit for her trouble, right in the cheek, but she shook it off and kept going. That’s what I mean when I say these dogs earn it.
The Texas crew was into it from the jump. They were competitive, keeping score, laughing at the tough shots, and making them when it counted. One of the harder moments was a small iguana on a rocking boat going uphill along a seawall. Anybody can shoot a big one sitting still. It takes a real shooter to connect on a small target from a moving boat in the heat. They held their own.
Speaking of heat, we were pushing through over 100 degrees all day. That kind of heat will slow you down if you let it. We didn’t.
Now, back to that other boat. Turns out one of the ladies over there got into it a little, and somebody called the cops after seeing them with airguns near the water. We’re fully contracted to be out there, so it all got sorted, but still. You don’t want to come down to Florida on vacation and leave on probation.
At the end of the day, the iguanas are here to stay. We need a whole lot more than one freeze to change that. But me and my team are chipping away at it, canal by canal, community by community. And honestly, I want to be the one to get it done. I’m not ready to let a cold snap take credit for my work.
