Monsters in the Tropics

I'm writing from the beautiful Caribbean island of St. Lucia, where my ongoing fear of confronting my dreaded nemeses threatens to spoil an otherwise wonderful vacation.

While I have gone several days without incident, I have a persistent, paralyzing, and completely rational fear of iguanas, lizards, and snakes. This phobia is crippling.

I dread iguanas so much that I hesitate to visit places where they're ubiquitous, like Florida, Mexico, and the Caribbean. That's a lot of vacation spots. 

A Floridian iguana

I have seen iguanas the size of alligators in Miami. And don't forget, in Florida, the iguanas fall out of trees. 

When they learn about my suffering, most people tell me that iguanas are “harmless.” This claim is neither helpful nor true. These intimidating creatures do serious harm to my peace of mind. 

The next cliché that always comes from well-meaning mouths is that “they are more afraid of me than I am of them.”

Please. This is nonsense. Has any iguana ever avoided going to Cleveland because he was terrified of meeting me? Does he run away when he sees me? Dissolve into a puddle of anxiety?

Oustalet's chameleon

As bad luck would have it, when I worked at the Cleveland Botanical Garden, one of the conservatory's main attractions was a free-roaming Malagasy giant chameleon (Oustalet's chameleon). This chap has a spring-loaded tongue, a third eye, and is the second-largest chameleon on Earth. My job required me to guide the media to see it. I don't know how I got through this.

Then there are snakes.

Once, at a beautiful countryside swimming pool in Ohio, I pleasantly and unsuspectingly chatted with Joe as we bobbed in the deep end. Suddenly, Joe looked extremely concerned. Trembling, he pointed to my shoulder.

And there it was: the mother of all serpents — an exotic, fearsome black-and-white striped snake slithering down my arm from my shoulder.

Michael Phelps had nothing on me. I bolted and shot out of that pool faster than anyone had ever seen me move. As this story gets retold over the years, some say the snake grows larger and larger. But I tell you, it was a python of unreal proportions. 

Speaking of pythons, once again, Florida earns the prize for attracting the worst of the animal kingdom. Burmese pythons, introduced through the exotic "pet" trade, are a major invasive species in South Florida. A record-breaking 18-foot, 215-pound python was captured in 2021.

Anxiethy-ridden at Monteverde

When we visited Costa Rica a few years ago, I was extremely alert to all kinds of creepy-crawlers. I believe this condition is called hypervigilance. Even as I immersed myself in the botanical wonders of the Monteverde cloud forest, I was scanning up, down, sideways, and behind my head for fear of encountering one of the dreaded creatures. Joe does not suffer from my affliction. If necessary, I use him as a human shield to protect myself from harm's way.

The tanning iguana

An obstinate iguana roosted on the steps leading down to the restaurant where we had breakfast each morning. Another of these lethargic fiends tanned himself regularly by the pool right next to the lounge chairs. I despise iguanas’ lazy dispositions almost as much as their disgusting physical appearance.

I suppose I can take solace in the fact that I did not live 65.5 million years ago, when pliosaurs, the largest carnivorous reptiles ever, roamed the earth. The recent discovery of one’s remains filled me with primordial anxiety.

Apart from hypnosis, which has worked on me before, I don’t know how to calm my fears. 

Maybe the only cure for my ophidiophobia (fear of snakes) and herpetophobia (fear of reptiles) is to embrace agoraphobia and stay the hell inside.

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