Eating Iguanas

Yesterday evening I returned from an 11 day trip to Florida to hunt invasive lizards, work on the new book, and film a 'sizzler' (that's a short version of a TV pilot) for the show in development that is based on the 'Eating Aliens' book. Aside from what was filmed for the pilot, I have loads of great video to edit into instructional videos to post here over the next few weeks.

Since I have two entire chapters to write about the species hunted on this trip, I'm not going to get as in depth right now as I will for the book. But I'd still like to give a general outline of the iguana situation.

The two species that we focused on during this trip were black spiny-tailed iguanas and green iguanas. Despite both being called 'iguanas,' the two species are very different and not especially closely related. I hunted the spiny-tails on Boca Grande island, off the Gulf coast of Florida, with George Cera. A professional hunter and wildlife specialist, George was personally responsible for killing over 16,000 spiny-tailed iguanas from Boca Grande under a contract with the town to do so.

These spiny-tails were wreaking havoc on Boca Grande's ecosystem. The once-common anoles had mostly been devoured by the omnivorous iguanas. These aren't like the green iguanas that people keep as pets. They eat meat at any opportunity. The young of endangered burrowing owls, eggs and young of endangered scrub jays, gopher tortoise eggs and hatchlings, etc. What possessed someone to release these things into the wild is incomprehensible to me.

For some reason, there are still people openly doubting whether adult spiny-tails act as predators. They believe that only juveniles eat insects and that as they get older they become exclusively herbivorous. This is a myth. I have personally witnessed a large adult spiny-tail iguana leaping to grab an anole and eat it. Examining their droppings I have found hair and fragments of the wing covers of beetles. The teeth of the adults make their purpose very clear. A set of wickedly sharp incisors up front are hooked backwards for the clear purpose of holding on to prey. They remind me of the front teeth of the long-extinct chasmatosaur.

Everything that I know about hunting iguanas, I learned from George Cera. I spent 3 days with George in Boca Grande, mostly cruising around in a golf cart as we looked for any shape that was out of place with the background and might have been an iguana. There are far fewer spiny-tails in Boca Grande than there used to be, but we still saw quite a few. In the process of knocking out 16,000 iguanas, George has gotten very good at what he does.

While George also does some trapping, we used .17 caliber air rifles for this hunt. A .22 LR or .22 magnum would have been the preferred tool for this work, but it is illegal to discharge a real firearm in Boca Grande. You don't get much in the way of hydrostatic shock from a .17 pellet, so shot placement is extremely important. The effective range is quite limited as well on all but the smallest of lizards, requiring the hunter to come in very close and risk spooking the prey.

There is only one type of shot that is fully effective on a big lizard. It is imperative to knock out the central nervous system at once or else the creature will escape before its body can be retrieved. I have personally witnessed the heart of a snake continue to beat for approximately an hour after being removed from the animal's body. Reptiles are just plain tough and their bodies can continue to function against all rational odds for a good long while after being seriously injured. Even after a perfect shot through the lungs of an iguana it could scurry off into a palm thicket or mangrove swamp to die 10 minutes later in some crevice or tree where you will never find it.

The brain shot is standard for this reason, although I once saw George deliberately put a raking shot through the upper spine from behind. Same thing, essentially.

We got some great video demonstrating how to butcher and skin iguanas in order to eat them. That will be posted here as soon as I'm able to (some of it was exclusively for the TV pilot and I'm not sure whether I'll be able to use it here). There will certainly be a full explanation in the book. The meat actually tasted pretty good. Yes, like chicken. We made tacos with the spiny-tails and later on in the trip when I was hunting alone in the Florida Keys I turned part of a large green iguana into a nice American-styled ragù sauce.

Up next for the Eating Aliens project during the month of October: An expedition to rural Georgia to hunt feral hogs and a trip to New York City to trap and snare European pigeons on roof-tops.

[The photo depicts me about to skin the tail of an invasive green iguana in the kitchenette of my pop-up camper on Big Pine Key, Florida.]