In the Florida Keys At Thirty Degrees Iguanas in the Trees Freeze
For a full week now we’d been pounded.
The winter wind had spanked the Florida Keys for almost a full seven days. The temperature got so cold, we couldn’t work on our boats. We couldn’t sit back relaxing with cool drinks in our hands, watching the world go by. We couldn’t do anything. All we could do was to wrap ourselves in comforters, sit two feet in front of our space heaters, listen to the wind moaning in the rigging, and endure the bouncing waves.
Someday was closest to the canal’s edge, out of the wind, so my boat bounced the least. Malone’s poor boat was hanging out there at the end of the dock, and took the full brunt of the fetch. Every wave drove his little trimaran into the dock in a never-ending, creaking, and slamming monotony. His boat groaned as it thumped against the dock and sounded like a pile-driving machine whose operator got paid by the pile.
The wind was so cold the iguanas couldn’t scamper, crawl, or do anything iguanas normally do. They just sat in the trees slowly getting colder and colder. Finally, their tiny pointed claws became limp and they lost their grip on the trees. They simply dropped, their little bodies thumping on the ground.
Tim and I were at an outdoor restaurant in Marathon. We hadn’t seen each other in a while so this was a chance to catch up. In the middle of lunch, an iguana plopped down on the gravel beside our table. He dropped out of the mangrove and landed at our feet. He didn’t scurry away like iguanas normally do. He just lay there on the outdoor restaurant’s path, his eyes half-open, legs outstretched, like some tiny green dinosaur-shaped Popsicle.
The waitress walked over and picked it up, then put him safely in the crook of a nearby tree. She turned to Tim and I and chirped,
“Second time today.”
Nelson patrolled our compound gathering the frozen iguanas. He was taking them back to the warmth of his trailer in an attempt to save them. I was surprised that Nelson was a closet tree-hugger.
Annie asked;
“Do you think they’re going to eat them?”
“You’re asking me?” I answered. “What do iguanas taste like anyway?
Standing on my deck, I shouted to Nelson and pointed. At the edge of the canal a huge iguana hung from a bush. His claws were wrapped in a death grip around the mangrove root, his back legs and tail dangled in the freezing waters of the canal. His head hung back, lifeless. Nelson climbed down through the maze of roots and picked up the limp reptile.
“Is a big one!” Nelson shouted triumphantly.
The iguana’s frozen body was the size and length of a green pumpernickel with a tail just as long. However big it was, Nelson wanted to keep the poor frozen thing away from his dog Sarge and Teddy’s two Pit Bulls.
I threw Sarge a piece of bread to bribe his cop’s mind away the frozen iguana, while Nelson scrambled through the mangrove trees to capture it.
The iguana in Nelson’s hands moved slowly, but it did move. It took the reptile five seconds to blink. At this temperature, the iguanas’ blood must have had the consistency of melting ice cream. Nelson held up the slow moving iguana for all us boaters to see. Its tail hung down to Nelson’s knees.
“Jew warm them up an they run aroun’ like before.” Nelson said.
“If you say so.” Annie and I exchanged glances from the decks of our boats.
Nelson nick-named the iguana ‘Iggy’, and wrapped the tail around its body so that the lizard would fit in one of his many discarded beer cases. They put the now iguana filled beer case under the table inside the tiny 10 X 10 trailer that Nelson, Carlos and Sarge shared.
His whole trailer was now jammed with frozen iguanas. Boxes of iguanas were all over the floor, on the shelves, on the beds. They were even tucked into the shelves of the closet. There must have been two dozen semi-frozen lizard popsicles jammed into that 10 X 10 trailer.
Nelson put some some rotten pears and bananas in Iggy’s beer case. The fruit was either too rotten or the lizard was so cold he didn’t eat anything. Every time he left the trailer, Nelson turned the Havana radio station up loud.
I shouted over to Annie. “Maybe salsa helps to warm them up!”
It was so cold in the Keys that the next day fish began to die. Nelson and Carlos now ignored the iguanas and walked along the canals collecting fish bodies and putting them in garbage bags. We hoped they were burying them.
After a couple of days of the cold and inactivity, I felt stir-crazy. I changed my flip-flops for socks and running shoes. It may have been cold but the sun was high and there were no clouds. I wanted to at least enjoy the morning’s sunshine. Along with the shoes and socks, I put on a heavy shirt over a long-sleeved welding shirt I found in the bottom of my duffel bag, and I went out for a walk along Coco Plum beach.
I was alone, which felt odd for the middle of the tourist season. Normally, Coco Plum Beach is a thin beach. Between the water and mangroves, the beach is a mere fifty feet. This morning it was high tide. If I did meet someone, there was only a skinny strip of sand between the water and the trees. We would have to make room for each other.
I was walking along this thin strip trying to avoid the dead fish littering the tideline when I came across a turtle. The turtle was about the size of a football. Its head lolled back and forth with each wave. The movement at first made the turtle look as if it was searching for something, but on closer inspection it was clear the turtle was very dead. Some sea creature had already eaten away its eyes.
I was looking down at the turtle as an old homeless man, carrying a shepherd’s staff, approached me. We nodded to each other. Together, we studied the turtle. The turtle’s head lolled back and forth in the wavelets like he was looking at both of us. After a long moment, the man turned to me and said,
“Do you think we should try resuscitation?”
When I told the workers at the marina what the man had said, one of them asked, “Did he have a walking stick?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, that’s Frankie. He’s from planet Venus. He’s harmless, but right out there.”
It was 4 PM and I stood on Someday’s deck and shouted to everybody on the other boats that tonight I would be making chili. Nelson and Carlos had about twelve cents between them, and they and Annie had shared meals with me, so I was due.
I got my one and only pot out and put in hamburger, rice, beans, corn, Heinz 57, mushrooms, and my secret ingredient. I’d borrowed Nelson’s extra hot Cuban sauce. Someday’s tiny cabin smelled of spice and garlic and warmth and friendship.
I didn’t have enough plates and cutlery so everybody crammed into my one-man sailboat had to bring their own. They held their plates to their chests like smiling kids holding their new books after a visit to a book store when my neighbors scrambled into my boat.
The wind was howling outside, but there was laughter in two languages inside Someday. I passed around a magnum of white wine and we discussed which of the gas station convenience stores sold the best wine. Through much laughter, it was decided that the two criteria we would use for who sold the best wine was how cheap the wine was, and how big the bottle was.
The laughter seemed to be louder and taken to the next level when the wind moaned through the rigging and the waves slapped the sides of Someday. When I placed a second magnum of wine on the table, everybody’s eyes lit up.
We were playing fort with wine, and very spicy chili. It was as spicy and as hot as Annie and I could stand it, but Nelson pronounced my chili’s spice, ‘A good start.’
At the height of the laughter, a particularly large wave slapped Someday’s beam. We grabbed our wine cups and then laughed. Crammed in together, we felt a closeness, both physical and emotional. It was a feeling of us against the storm, of shared meals, drinks, warmth. We four were the closest thing to family that any of us have had for a long time.
After an hour, when the wine was all gone, Nelson and Carlos went back to their trailer, and Annie and I sat alone in the warmth and quiet of departed friends.
“Thanks for inviting us Rick. They,” Annie nodded towards the Cuban’s trailer, “Don’t get invited out much.”
“And they really needed the food.” I laughed.
Annie smiled and looked at me.
“You’ve changed, since you’ve been here.”
“What? No more moaning, pissing and crying?” I smiled.
“Well, yeah.” Annie handed me her empty wine-glass.
“I talked with a minister. And he had it worse than I ever did. The absolute pain in his life put everything in mine into perspective.” I smiled at the table and quickly glanced up to Annie’s blue green eyes.
“If you want to be happy you have to work at it.”
We sat quiet. Comfortable with each other’s company.
“You’ve done a pretty nice job.” Annie looked around.
I took a slow last sip of the wine, and reached for the coffee.
“I still got some stuff to do, here.” My finger pointed towards the cupboards. “But it’s mostly maintenance stuff that I can do anywhere.”
“People have gone around the world on smaller boats than this.” Annie raised her hand.
“Yeah, and they were twenty years old.”
Annie smiled.
From back in the mangroves, came screams and shouts in Spanish and English. The shouts at first were muffled but became louder and shriller as Nelson’s trailer’s door slammed open. Nelson and Carlos exploded into the yard.
Annie smiled a thin smile as she warmed her hands around her coffee cup. Her eyes went to Someday’s ceiling as she listened to the din outside. Finally she smiled at me and said, “I guess all the iguanas in Nelson’s trailer warmed up.”
Rick Ranson 