Thanks again everyone! Frog envy is a terrible thing Calvin. Awful!....;0) I have "red eye tree frog" envy myself. It's not a chameleon WC. Just what we call "green lizards" - we like to keep it simple..lol.. We have skinks here to Toyo - "blue tails" and "red heads"....the reds are monsters/large! They are predatory on the little green guys, and the blue tails are highly poisonous. Very toxic to cats that play with them - to death. Hi Olya!`Thanks! I'm glad you like the bark!! And for all of you in the frozen north with all of this envy, here is hope!!! Spring "thinks" it has sprung in Florida!! This is Hog Plum (taken today)....it's the first to bloom out in spring here, so that means it's heading your way!!

bgrose, I am deleting the pics, so they should be gone in a few days. I thought if I showed you my cute lizard you would stop being afraid of them, but I can see my idea did not help at all. I have to say that I am glad that I have lizards, and we let the garden spider stay most of one summer so our ten year old could watch a spider spin its web, catch bugs, and then spin a cocoon and lay its eggs in the fall. We watched the baby spiders leave the next spring. I don't want her to be afraid of spiders and lizards or snakes, either, for that matter. I want her to know the dangers of some snakes and to appreciate the other critters for the jobs they play in the garden and in the soil. I am sorry you have such a deep fear of these animals and hope that you have success in removing your lizard, if that will help you. Sincerely, Gean

minuet, the blue tailed skinks are the babies, the ones with red orange on them are the big old males. the females get big too, but no orange on their heads. both sexes loose the beautiful blue tails when they become adults. there are 2 or 3 species in this area and they all look almost identical as young. they are easier to tell apart as adults. john, you're partly right. the eft is the mid stage and the land form. it has very bright orange, bumpy skin and stays that way for a couple years. then they transform to the aquatic form, which is the final stage, they have a strongly keeled tail and they have more greenish coloration, though are still have the orange spots. their skin then becomes like a frog's - smooth and slimy. they start out as aquatic tadpoles like frogs &toads. they can live 15 years. we kept one in an aquarium with fish a long time ago, and he did just fine. 'iglar eckles'- and yeah, there's a story behind the strange name. all in all, funky animals. never seen a red salamander, but it sounds incredibly beautiful. cool fact- in the nc mtns, there are more species of salamanders in one small area than anywhere else in the world.

as child I grew up in Cuba in an area near the coast , lots of threes in our back yard, I had so many of this lizards along with others, I can't claim is from Cuba, but for sure I have yet to see one in Florida, I would suggest, go to a Cuban website, under "Flora Cubana" it would tell you about of the species that are from there. Cuba does have many diferent species of animal, that are only found there, like the cuban cocodrile, the smallest bird, Zun Zun like a huminbird, smallest frog, and more. One of my favoritye videos on enviroment is from PBS library "Cuba, eden by accident" it is very stonning what our horrible enemy (according to some) is doing way better than us, and lots of other countries to protect the enviroment, air , water, plants and animals