The Iguana Chronicles Podcast
How to Identify and Prevent Iguana Infestations on Your Property
We’ll break down how strategic iguana trapping, cutting back vegetation, and even nighttime removals effectively curb these scaly invaders. Plus, we’ll share some surprising and sometimes unsettling stories from the field. Stay tuned and learn how we can tackle the iguana problem together. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review to support the show! Now, let’s get into it!
We’ll break down how strategic iguana trapping, cutting back vegetation, and even nighttime removals effectively curb these scaly invaders. Plus, we’ll share some surprising and sometimes unsettling stories from the field. Stay tuned and learn how we can tackle the iguana problem together. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review to support the show! Now, let’s get into it!
Michael Ronquillo [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Iguana Chronicles, the podcast where we dive into the wild world of South Florida's invasive iguanas. I'm your host, Michael Quill, and each week, we'll explore the fascinating history of these creatures, share thrilling tales from the front lines of iguana removal, and provide essential tips for homeowners and business dealing with these scaly invaders. Get ready for an adventure in wildlife management and education right here on the iguana chronicles. What's up, everyone? Welcome back to the guanar chronicles podcast. My name is Mike. I'm the owner of Humani Water Control, and this episode is gonna be about Ewana removal services. We service every type of property. We service, homes, buildings, hotels, condominiums, associations, cemeteries, and schools.
Michael Ronquillo [00:00:40]:
We service pretty much any kind of, property. Iguanas are extremely invasive in South Florida. Since the 1960s, they've just been taking over and just dispersing and overpopulating areas, pretty much causing infestations and, and every sort of property. So our services are, are very unique. We don't just go and remove iguanas. We like to make a full assessment of the property to provide proper ewana removal services. And what that means is when you when you if you call us to provide a a service, we'll arrive there and we'll assess the entire property, and we'll give you guys advice and pointers of what to do to deter this he wants from coming back. And what that looks like is, let's say you give us a call.
Michael Ronquillo [00:01:20]:
We'll make an appointment. We'll show up to your property. We'll do a full walk through, and we'll find areas that are being impacted by your lawn. Let's say they're eating up your landscaping. We'll focus on that area to make sure we capture the iguanas first to help you avoid from having to change our plans or having to constantly take care of these plants. Because remember, we want to damage these plants. Sometimes they don't survive or they need extra stuff like fertilizer to bring them back. So we'll focus on those spots to capture those iguanas to help deter those problems.
Michael Ronquillo [00:01:48]:
What we also do is we like to walk around the property and look for any overgrown, trees encroaching from other properties. So what happens with this is, if you let's say one of your neighbors has iguanas, but you don't. What happens is these iguanas climb the trees and they just climb onto your property using other stuff like fences or or bushes. So we'll tell you, hey. Look. The best thing to do to avoid these iguanas from coming over is cut this stuff back. Because once you cut this stuff back, the iguanas can't climb over. So that's one great method to deter iguanas.
Michael Ronquillo [00:02:16]:
Another problem with iguanas is that they love to dig burrows on your property. And the or you want to remove services, it includes that. And when we do all the assessment of your property, we'll look for you want a burrows as well. Because Because the last thing you want is when you want to lay 70 eggs on your property and then you have more in infestation. So we include a lot of services when we do we wanna removals. We'll tell you about cutting back the plants, the trees, we'll look for the burrows. And we'll also tell you if there's any access points that they might be coming in through. So in that case, you might you could block those areas off or install or take the board borders on those spots.
Michael Ronquillo [00:02:50]:
So when we implement iguan removal services, it's not only, like I mentioned, the remote iguanas. We use different tactics to remove these iguanas. We use traps. We use a long pole snare, grabbers, hand captures, and even a pellet rifle. A lot of people are a little bit unsure about the pellet rifle method. It is legal to use as long as you do it in a humane manner. You have to understand, a lot of times these ones are in high places, like huge palm trees or big oak trees, and the only way to get them down is by using this method. So we will use this method as and if it's necessary.
Michael Ronquillo [00:03:21]:
We like using our pole a lot. Our 20 we have a pole that extends 20 feet long, and that gives an advantage to approach the Iwona quietly and swiftly to get the Iwona out of different places. So we have many different ways that, you know, that we get these ones off of your property. So when it comes to having infestation in your home, it's not just a 1 week service. This could take weeks. It could take months. It all depends on how many ones you have on your property. And a lot of times people think they have, no, I only have 5 or 6.
Michael Ronquillo [00:03:48]:
They think they have 5 or 6 ewons because these ewons all look the same. So when we end up seeing these problems, hey, I only have 5 or 6, take about a month. I'm like, alright. We'll let you know how long it's gonna take. So as we go removing, now we're moving 10 and then 15 and then 20. She's, I had no idea I had 21s on my property. I go, yeah, because they all look the same and they could be coming on from other properties. So it's funny because a a lot of people just think they have just a few e one's and they really end up having a lot more of e one's in their properties.
Michael Ronquillo [00:04:17]:
We have different types of removal, techniques we use. Like I mentioned, the full snare, the pellet rifle, the traps, the grabbers. One of the ones that we love to do is the nighttime iguan removal service. That's one that's really shown great results throughout the years. We're gonna have a full episode about that coming up on one of our one of our episodes. One of the major complaints we get is is they wanna poop around swimming pools. We try to tell clients of how to deter this from happening. We'll give different strategies and different ideas of how to stop this because it's become very frustrating to have your iguanas defecating constantly in your pool.
Michael Ronquillo [00:04:47]:
Again, this is a major health risk for this. You want us to leave droppings in your pool. So once we locate where they want us, defecating around the pool area, we typically set up traps in those spots. Because for some reason or another, you want us to love pooping in the same exact spot. We have clients say, hey. I washed it off yesterday, and here it is again in the same exact spot. So what we'll do is we'll put traps then along those areas where the iguanas are defecating at, and we have extremely great success on removing these iguanas from those areas. One thing we see a lot, which we don't understand, it's crazy and it's disgusting.
Michael Ronquillo [00:05:20]:
A lot of homes have pools that also have jacuzzis attached to these pools and they have this little waterfall from the water that falls from the jacuzzi into the Kasumi pool. And that little spot where the water falls, he wanna love pooping in that spot. I don't understand why. I'm still trying to figure that out myself. I've tried to do research on it. I can't find anything, to be honest. So we get all these calls from these homes of the guanosal, never getting in these pools, and it's mostly always in that spot. And you gotta think about it.
Michael Ronquillo [00:05:46]:
The easy one is putting on this exact spot where the water flows. It's just constant feces just getting walking to the pool like non stop non stop. And this becomes super annoying for these home residents. They just clean the pool and then a day later the iguana comes back and poops again. If you think about it, the money you're spending on the pool guy, by removing iguanas, you're gonna avoid the headache of having to clean the pool, being able to enjoy your pool, and that had to deal with a mess. Because when the wanna when the guana feces wash it into the pool, it just splatters everywhere. It just dissipates and just this becomes a huge mess inside your swimming pool. And it was it's just a smart decision just to get these ones removed instead of having to clean the piece feces like we mentioned, call the pool guy constantly.
Michael Ronquillo [00:06:25]:
Sometimes he won't be around. So let's say if you have a pool a pool party on Saturday, and if you wanna decides to come early for your party and he's uninvited and he just leaves you a little prison in the pool. Yeah. That that that could be a problem. This pool guy might not show up for a couple of hours and you have a bunch of people in your home just trying to enjoy the pool that day and you can't because you have to wait for the pool guy. So, yeah, that's a problem in our opinion. When we offer, our services to to schools, we have to take a different approach and wanna move, you wanna move a process. A lot of schools have, these rules and regulations, and they're very careful of of the method of that of they have different, methods of what they allow us to use in these schools.
Michael Ronquillo [00:07:03]:
Some don't allow traps. Some some don't allow any type of shooting around the school. And it's understandable because of the liability. So we try to always accommodate the person that's having these unwanted problems. So when these schools have these unwanted problems, we'll tell them with the options we have. Hey, we have the tracking, we have the shooting, we have the long parallel pole with the snare, and with the nighttime you wanna remove them. And for schools, the nighttime you wanna remove has been the most effective one. There's nobody in the school.
Michael Ronquillo [00:07:27]:
There's no liability. We go in there at nighttime, use our pellet rifle, and remove all these iguanas effectively. And no one knows, no one sees what's going on. And it's a lot safer. It's a lot safer for the kids, for the staff members. And there's also schools that do a lot of trapping. So what we'll do is when we get hired in these in these schools around Miami Dade County or anywhere in South Florida, we'll put these traps in common areas where we see iguanas. And what that means is we'll go to the school, we'll do an assessment, and we'll just watch and see where the most iguan activity is.
Michael Ronquillo [00:07:57]:
And once we find those location, we'll place traps in those spots to get these iguanas out, and it works great. We make sure to always hide these traps in spots where the kids can't see them just so they don't see the whole process of the removing iguanas. Legally, you're supposed to check the traps every 24 hours. We try and do it a lot quicker than that. So what we do is we try to talk to the staff and usually they have a maintenance guy there doing working the grounds and stuff. So we'll tell him, hey. Let's have a meeting with your maintenance guy. So we'll have a meeting.
Michael Ronquillo [00:08:22]:
We'll tell him, hey. Look. When I place these traps in these spots that are hidden behind these bushes, If you could just check them once a day for us and let us know that we caught an iguana, and we'll be right out to remove them. And that's exactly what we do. We'll set the trap. We'll put the fresh food inside the traps. And then we'll typically go the same day or the following day early to remove these iguanas, but definitely before 24 hours. And the ones that don't allow the traps over the nighttime, we'll just use our long pole snare.
Michael Ronquillo [00:08:46]:
So what that looks like is we'll arrive to the property when we're able to service and we'll walk around the entire property and we'll use this pole snare. And it's extremely effective as well. We we can remove easily we have removed effective easily 15, 20, 25 e one is on in one visit and the schools are highly infested using this method. So this is a less aggressive approach, but it does give results especially for schools. This goes as well for hotels and condominiums. You gotta you you always gotta work around your clients. So we always try and do that. We always try and give the best offers we have for the services to accommodate these buildings.
Michael Ronquillo [00:09:16]:
When you have these hotels where a lot of tourists come in, there's not many methods you could use on these properties. So again, one prevent whatever it's available to implement for these specific properties, for hotels in particular, in the nighttime has been one of the best ones. Typically the tourists are are already in bed at a certain time so we'll show up there when there's nobody around in the nighttime and we'll just move these iguanas. The baby iguanas as well. The baby iguanas are a big problem. Remember, the female iguanas lays 70 eggs a year. So when these hatch, these little baby guanas just start running all over the place. And when we do this, you wanna move services at night, the baby ones are typically sleeping in bushes.
Michael Ronquillo [00:09:50]:
So we'll go with our LED flashlight and we'll just handpick these iguanas. And this is extremely effective. So when we do associations and we provide iguaner mobile services, it's a little bit more complicated. Remember, these associations have anywhere from 10 to 100 of homes inside this one association. So what we do is we'll have a meeting with the property manager, and they'll tell us what's going on, what's being impact how they're being impacted by iguanas. And then we'll come up with a an iguana control plan to eradicate these iguanas from their property. And it's important because not every single home in the association is being impacted. It's mostly always around the ones around the whole border of the association, the outside.
Michael Ronquillo [00:10:29]:
We'll try and tackle those spots effectively. So we'll go to each one of those properties and we'll see what problems we're having. And then we'll see what we do. We have to use traps or if we use our snare. So, again, we'll use different tools to accommodate the property to have the best results. The associations are the ones are are always highly infested. I know we do one association at Ventura, and they have a golf course right behind their association. So Busyguanas, all they do is do they just come over because this golf course apparently is not doing any one or more services.
Michael Ronquillo [00:10:58]:
We've contact them before personally, which is something we always do to try and control the ones on their side to help avoid them from coming onto the association. So That's something we always constantly do. If we're doing one property, we try and contact the neighboring, properties to get all they want us from the surrounding areas to avoid new infestations from continue coming in. On this association, we will also try and implement the term methods, meaning that we'll install barriers around the outside where the iguanas are coming in through. Like I mentioned in one of our episodes, there's trees overhanging from the golf course into the property. We'll tell these association property manager, hey, let's cut these trees back so they don't keep climbing over. And if they have a fence line around the outside, we'll offer our Cleary 1 of the, tree wrap. So a clear wrap that we use around trees to help the cherry ones from climbing over.
Michael Ronquillo [00:11:42]:
So we use that on trees, on fences, on different objects, and it works really well around the perimeter of the of the properties. We're we're gonna talk more about that, Iwata Clear wrap in in one of our episodes and how beneficial it's been for homeowners, that love their trees. The you wanna control, you wanna remove services that we provide. It's always very specific. Like I mentioned, every property is different. They have different issues, different problems. So we always try and give the best control method to help deter these unwanted from climbing onto the property and causing damages. So if, if you were a property owner or a property manager and you're you haven't had any luck with, another company or or yourself in a matter of fact of getting these ones away, we have different a bunch of different methods that we use to implement a lawn or mobile services.
Michael Ronquillo [00:12:29]:
Every plan that we implement into your property, it's very specific. We always have a a certain game plan, to have the best results. So let's say that if you hire us and we are unsuccessful the first bid, it's removing iguanas, we'll tell you automatically, listen, you have too many trees. The iguanas are hiding in spots when we come in, we can't see them because that happens at times. There's times that iguanas are hiding in bushes and you're not gonna see them. So then we'll offer them our nighttime iguanas removal services. And that that's been the the game changer. For many properties, they've had years of unsuccessful trapping or moving, and we'll tell them about our nighttime.
Michael Ronquillo [00:13:02]:
And, well, the first night we'll remove a bunch of iguanas. And it's they've been extremely happy with that with that outcome. So for when it comes to moving iguanas from cemeteries, a touchy subject. We always had there's always people there doing their thing, viewing their loved ones, if you wanna call it that. We do this one specific cemetery in North Miami that's infested with iguanas. They have 100 of iguanas. They just let it go. Remember, this all start by just seeing 1 iguana, then you see 2.
Michael Ronquillo [00:13:28]:
And then these 2 iguanas, maybe they were male or female, they'll mate, they'll lay their eggs, and now you have maybe 73 iguanas because again, the female iguanas lay 70 eggs in a year up to. And it just goes on from there. 70, and 70, and 70, and 70. So by the time you saw you only had 2 or 3 iguanas, now you have 100 of iguanas, which is exactly the case at this specific town of cemetery. We've been there for a couple months now and we removed over 40 to 50uanas at this one location. And you have to remember that it's tricky when you do e one removal services in certain properties like cemeteries when there's a lot of people, you gotta be extremely careful. Trapping is not really allowed in cemeteries. There's not really anywhere to put them.
Michael Ronquillo [00:14:06]:
It's a very open area, so you can't really put traps all over the place. A lot of cemeteries don't like that idea. So again, on on this, particular property, we have to use, air pellet rifle method. We'll drive around the cemetery and we'll have free iguanas, and we'll use that method to remove these iguanas. And having ewannas in cemeteries is not a good idea. Like I mentioned in one of our episodes, do you want us to dig burrows to lay their eggs? So where there's plaques, we've seen holes around the border of these cemeteries, you know, the grounds of the plaques. And these are the ones digging burrows to lay their eggs. These iguanas could dig up to 70 feet long, so they could reach a spot down there that we'll talk about that on another episode.
Michael Ronquillo [00:14:45]:
So we've seen these holes before or on these plaques and we know exactly what's happening. They're digging holes cause it's a softer area and they can reach the coffin area. We met someone that was actually a property manager that he had a friend that worked at a cemetery, and he told us the story that was freaky to us. That he had a bunch of iguanas in the cemetery in the Keys. I think it was a Key West. And he saw an iguana come out in one day from one of the holes, and he had a piece of cloth in his mouth. Now I'm not sure if he got deep enough to reach what we think he reached. I'm not sure what happened there, but I heard that story and it was mind boggling to me that that actually can happen, you know.
Michael Ronquillo [00:15:22]:
So that's just one of the the problems of having ones with sem in around around cemeteries. Like I mentioned before, providing you water removal services is not just removing these reptiles. It's a lot more than that. We like to offer the best offer the best available, service we can to help control this population of invasive iguanas and whatever method is gonna work the best for your property. We like to take our time when we give our estimates to make sure we have the best outcome so you guys are happy. All our clients are happy for with our services. So that pretty much that pretty much wraps up our Watermoor Services podcast. We hope you guys enjoyed this episode.
Michael Ronquillo [00:15:58]:
We wanna hear from you guys. If you guys have any questions, any concerns, if you're having water problems yourself, we would love to hear from you. And if you guys wanna hear about a certain topic on one of our podcast episodes, we would love to talk about that. So until the next time, thanks for watching. See you later. Thanks for tuning into the episode of the Iguana Chronicles. We hope you enjoyed the deep dive into the challenges and triumphs of managing South Florida's Iguana population. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast.
Michael Ronquillo [00:16:24]:
Stay informed and stay proactive. Together, we can make a difference. Until next time, keep an eye out for those iguanas.