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  • From: <redherring@tnaccess.com>
  • To: <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] cold blooded insecticide
  • Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 07:57:05 -0600

When I was a kid, I kept chameleons as pets for a number of years. Like
Helene's chameleon, they lived on the windowsill and potted plants, but
since I had several,
they'd also lay eggs and occasionally hatch a little one. We never owned a
flyswatter all those years. My mom would go get a chameleon, wait for the
fly to land, and set the lizard down nearby. The lizard would go
catch the fly, and then she'd put it back on the windowsill. American
chameleons (anoles) do prefer soft bodied insects, and refuse anything that
tastes bad, eg ants.
Potato bugs advertise via their red color that they eat toxic plants, so the
only thing I know that likes to eat them is the Blue grosbeak, aka the
"potato bug bird". Our pet anoles were tame and easily handled, but wild
ones are fast. African chameleons, the type on the TV story, are larger and
slow moving, much easier to catch!!!
Perhaps the Fluffy Bunny lives somewhere that the summers are too short
and chilly for him to be aware of how important reptiles are in hotter
climates. In Florida, reptiles are active about 10 months of the year, and
are a major part of the
ecosystem. In Tennessee, snakes are active for only about 6 months, but are
essential for rodent control. Skinks are downright thick on the ground here
all summer, and so very active that they
must have a major effect on insect populations. My husband's fondness for
skinks increased the day he was looking for something to smash a scorpion
he'd just uncovered, and returned to find a skink munching the scorpion.
With reptiles, climate is everything. Consider that in northern Europe
they have a few rare adders that live such slow lives that they only bear
young every other year. By contrast, Florida is thick with snakes:
constricting snakes
that climb trees to feed on birds and birds eggs and baby squirrels, 5-6 ft
long snakes with poisonous fangs to feed on fluffy bunnies, even snakes that
specialize in feeding on
other snakes and reptiles. Chameleons hang around my mom's flowers and
shrubs, and she carefully puts back any lizard eggs she happens to dig up.
Skinks are less common than here in TN, but they are generally larger. My
kids had a big one they used to feed palmetto bugs to, but of course they
were expected to take his cage outside first as one unhappy palmetto bug can
smell up an entire house. And of course, let us not forget that in Florida
there are large heavy bodied alligators lying about the edges of lakes
waiting for unwary tourists and other major pests. Keep in mind that the
part of Florida I am familiar is only the SUBtropics, where they actually
have a sort of a winter when the reptiles get sluggish and retire for
awhile. In the true tropics, the reptiles never slow down.
As for toads vs lizards as pest control, I admit that toads are
voracious, but I have yet to see one living in the canopy of my fruit trees.
Chameleons are the only lizards I am personally familiar with that live up
in trees. Tree frogs do live up high though. We've only got the gray kind
in TN, but we have plenty of them. Donna





  • [NAFEX] cold blooded insecticide, redherring, 03/01/2003

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