​Of Geckos and Anoles

Every time I hear someone call one of our local, miniature dinosaurs a gecko, I want to stand up and yell at the top of my voice: THAT’S NOT A GECKO!

A constant, almost hourly barrage of television commercials for a car insurance company with a very similar name that calls their animated, iconic lizard a gecko has subliminally convinced our couch-potato, television addicted civilization all lizards here in Florida are geckos.

The effect of the media bombardment has been astonishing. It seems nobody cares what the brown, sometimes green, lizard running across the leaves on your hibiscus really is. Its identity slips slowly into the complacency that makes existence in today’s mind-numbing world acceptable. I wouldn’t be surprised me if someone asked, “Do they really talk?” Right. And they drive little red sports cars, too! The natural instinct to find the quickest, easiest path through our daily rituals is the culprit for our acceptance of blissful, inconsequential ignorance.

Oh, we called them by the wrong names when I grew up in South Florida, too, but it wasn’t a willing disregard of facts. It was simply pre-Internet naivete. There was no deluge of information available at our fingertips back then. We still did everything in longhand, which today is called cursive. If I wanted to research what everyone called them, it meant a bus ride to the library and even then it might still come out as the colloquial name. We called them chameleons.

We called the harmless little lizards that turned from bright green to brown if you put them on a paper grocery bag chameleons because they could change colors. My mom told me they were even sold as chameleons in certain novelty or dime stores back in the late 30’s and early 40’s, complete with dainty golden collars and attaching chains. I assumed most of them starved to death while attached to some lady’s lapel. We allowed them to roam wild on our backyard screened porch - oh, sorry, today that’s called a lanai - because they ate bugs.

This isn’t the first time television has corrupted my Florida culture. Try to find Dolphin on your sea-food restaurant menu. It’s still there, but it’s now known as Mahi-Mahi. Why? Because a television show from years ago convinced the masses they were eating one of the stars of their show, a Bottle-nose Dolphin known as “Flipper” instead of the pelagic, deep sea fish the Cubans call Dorado. Restaurants changed the name to the Hawaiian name, Mahi-mahi, and the delicious fish has regained its popularity. Flipper is now safe from hungry seafood neophytes.

It has been many years since the Green Anole dominated the local gardens and shrubs of south Florida. It has been displaced - but not eliminated - in recent years by its dark-brown cousin from the Bahamas. They both share size and many physical attributes, their colors being the obvious difference. Several variations of the Bahamian Anole develop a ridge along the spine that resembles a small dinosaur. All males have the same red neck sack, or fan, boisterously inflated when attempting to attract females.

The Green Anoles, sometimes known today as Carolina Anoles, and the now numerically superior brown Bahamian Anole, and even the latest newcomer, the relatively large and rather unfriendly Cuban, or Knight Anole, all share one common trait: They all live here in Florida and THEY ARE NOT GECKOS!

:)