A hunt for the T. rex of anole lizards

Not too long ago I picked up an old travel book about Puerto Rico and read of a rare giant lizard, Anolis roosevelti, on the island of Culebra.

"Fame will visit anyone who finds this elusive creature," the author of the book proclaimed. Since Fame had thus far given me a rather wide berth, I hopped a plane to San Juan and then a smaller plane to Culebra.

By the time I arrived on the island, the lizard had shrunk. The book had described it as four feet long, but the local Fish and Wildlife person told me that it was no more than a foot long from snout to vent – hardly competition for a T. rex. Still, A. roosevelti is a T. rex compared with other anoles, which are among the smallest of all lizards.

I also learned that this giant among anoles had not been sighted since 1932. Not officially sighted, that is. But there were anecdotal reports of it being seen in the forested areas on Monte Resaca, Culebra's highest summit (height: 650 feet), as recently as a few years ago.

So I drove to the base of Monte Resaca and started bushwhacking.

Trusting in serendipity, I expected to see the anole in question basking on every boulder as well as ascending every gumbo-limbo tree. I was so intent on my search that I lost all sense of direction and ended up in someone's backyard.

A Culebran tending his garden looked up at me in surprise. My usual ploy when I trespass like this is to advance confidently toward the person, shake his hand, and announce in a punctilious English accent: "Dr. Basil Withers of the British Antarctic Survey. Jolly good to meet you, old chap."

Since this ploy would not work in the subtropics, I said, "Hello, Señor. Seen any big lagartos around here lately?"

"Sí," the man replied. "All the time."

"What's their habitat?" I asked excitedly.

"In my bathroom," he answered. He invited me in, where I saw the lagartos skittering around on the wall. They were geckos, not anoles, and they weren't even all that big.

Serendipity had gotten me nowhere, so I got in touch with Beverly Macintyre, who knew the island's backcountry intimately. She mentioned a particular boulder canyon on Monte Resaca, just the sort of place, she said, where a giant anole might hang out. Then she referred to recent development on Culebra; if it continued at its current breakneck pace, she said, a lot more creatures than A. roosevelti would be either endangered or extinct.

In our search for the lizard, Beverly and I entered not so much the forest primeval as the forest prickly. Ground-hugging cacti jabbed us, mesquite bushes stabbed us, saw-toothed bromeliads slashed at us, and a plant known locally as Fire Man (Tragia volubilis) delivered stings that make the stings of a stinging nettle seem positively genteel.

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