South Florida - The Cherry on a Pile of Dung

There's not a lot of people that are willing to deprive themselves of sleep and look for reptiles and other animals all night long.  My friends Alex and Rhett are freaks (hence why they're my friends).  Even after hours of finding nothing they will not stop looking for snakes, lizards and whatever else they're after.  Rhett's friend Taylor came along as well and she was a bit new to all of this but was an absolute trooper, mostly for putting up with our idiotic shenanigans that plagued the entire trip.  I'll be honest, I'm not quite as intense as they are.  Also, I'm happy with finding anything that sparks my interest and I tend to go at a much slower pace.  When you're in South Florida for only a weekend though, you've got make hay while the sun shines... or find chameleons before the sun comes up.  I was going to film everything but a few hours in I realized if we wanted to be productive then there was no way I could film because to film you must go at a much much slower pace.  So I left the cameras in the truck and got out my cell phone.

The first night was slow and we were finding things that I could find back home.  We really wanted to focus on species that we don't have in central Florida.  The second night is when stuff started getting exciting for me.  Alex and Rhett have seen mangrove water snakes galore before but it's not a species that I've ever seen much.  I think this little one may have had some N. fasciata influence.

After doing some night cruising we got bored of that and decided to do some shining in a new spot.  It wasn't terribly productive but I found my first find of the trip which was big rough green snake.  I say my first find because Alex and Rhett found most of the snakes.  I've found these in my yard before but they're just beautiful snakes and I don't see ones this size too often.  A couple minutes later I hear Rhett yell something incoherent so I go check it out and he's got a red rat snake.  It's the furthest south I've seen one. I took the opportunity to get a quick photo of these two vibrant snakes together.

After quite a bit of more shining in this area we decided to go look for chameleons.  We got to the spot around 12:30 AM.  I've never found an oustalet's chameleon and the night before we didn't do so hot looking for veiled chameleons since our previously productive spots had been partially cleared and it appeared that a lot of collecting had occurred.  I was a little disappointed with that since chameleons are some of my favorite things to find and the veileds are especially attractive.  We started shining and we started seeing a lot of knight anoles and cuban treefrogs.  At one point Alex found a small lizard about 30 feet up in a tree.  We all thought it might possibly be a baby chameleon (wishful thinking) so I got to climbing.  When we got it down it turned out to be a juvenile knight anole, which I hadn't seen one like this before.  he was one feisty little lizard!

We were a little bummed it wasn't a chameleon but I thought it was pretty cool anyway.  We continued our search for a few hours and didn't turn a single chameleon up.  Rhett and Taylor were starting to turn into zombies so they went back to the truck to get some rest.  Alex and I kept shining for another hour or so.  Up to this point we still had no luck.  We had been searching the same kind of spots so I figured we had nothing to lose by mixing it up and searching a different kind of area.  Alex agreed and we started shining without any expectations.  At this point we were just zombies wandering around with a head lamp strapped to our foreheads.  We had many false alarms as so many of the leaves in the trees looked just like sleeping chameleons.  I saw one of theses leaves and stopped and looked at it for a few seconds.  I was absolutely sure it was a big female oustalet's chameleon but after so many false alarms I figured I'd get a second opinion.  I stood there, barely awake and called to Alex to come look at this.  He stumbles over and looks at it. "That's a chameleon!" he exclaimed.  I just stood there with a smug face for a moment enjoying the victory of finding a chameleon, especially before Alex.  I reached up grabbed her and we continued looking.

A few minutes later I hear Alex yell for me that he's got one.  Carrying my beautiful prize I wander through the trees where I see his light.  He's found a juvenile about chest high.  She's a real cute one.  

By now it's about 3:30 AM and we're only running on a chameleon high.  Alertness has returned to us and we're both psyched to find more chameleons.  I duck under a tree and look up and among the branches I see the third chameleon of the night.  It's a big male, which was what I really wanted to find!  This is the second largest species of chameleon in the world.  This dude was the most chill chameleon I've ever come across and he was perfectly content to perch atop my head... and steal my glasses :)

                                            

By now we only had about an hour and a half before the sun started to come up so we went to gloat about our finds to Rhett and Taylor and make sure they felt dumb for sleeping.  Seeing the chameleons they wanted to find some too so they came with us to the same area and looked for a while but none of us could turn up another chameleon.  Alex found a red rat snake to finish up the trip.  Here we are with our plunder.

I know someone is going to ask so here's your answer: All native species were returned where they were found after photos and Rhett kept the little oustelet's and the adults were released where they were found.