Miami Wildlife

South Florida is teeming with dangerous and weird wildlife, much of it non-native and out of control.

And, no, I don't mean the local lawyers or South Beach nightlife.

Forget the Gators: Exotic Pets Run Wild in Florida: The southern end of Florida, the most tropical state outside Hawaii, is teeming with exotic beasts. As if alligators, panthers and other native creatures were not enough, the steamy swamps, murky waterways and lush tree canopies here are a paradise for furry, scaly, clawed, fanged and otherwise off-putting things that have no business roaming this side of the equator.

“This stuff doesn't happen in New Jersey, it doesn't happen in Ohio, but in South Florida it happens constantly,” said Todd Hardwick, whose trapping business, Pesky Critters, gets 60 calls a day from people with peacocks on their roofs, caimans in their driveways and iguanas in their tool sheds. “Miami-Dade County is probably ground zero for exotic animals that are on the loose and doing very well.”

Then again, that last remark does fit some people I know….

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