My mornings have acquired a certain ritualistic quality.
First, coffee—the one performance-enhancing drug still encouraged at my age. Then exercise, stretching, and a series of negotiations with various joints, tendons, and muscles that have recently retained independent counsel.
At 73, exercise is less about building the body than preserving the evidence. I am not training for the Olympics. I am trying to prevent my quadriceps, rotator cuffs, and lumbar spine from being sold off for parts.
This morning, while drinking my coffee and preparing for another round of musculoskeletal diplomacy, I noticed a brown anole climbing the adjacent wall.
He stopped and looked at me.
I stopped and looked at him.
Two creatures in South Florida, beginning another day and wondering what fresh indignity the environment had planned.
The brown anole is an immigrant. His ancestors came primarily from Cuba and the Bahamas, probably arriving in Florida aboard cargo ships in the late 1800s. They entered without passports, visas, interviews, or proof of vaccination. Yet they adapted rapidly, reproduced enthusiastically, and now occupy virtually every patio, shrub, fence, and stucco wall in the state.
By current standards, this represents either a spectacular immigration success story or a serious breakdown in border security.
Does my anole worry about deportation?
Probably not. Brown anoles are so firmly established in Florida that removing them would require locating several million tiny immigration officers capable of climbing walls. Still, he seemed cautious. Perhaps he had heard that enforcement priorities can change.
He moved along the wall in short bursts, pausing every few inches to survey the territory. I recognized the technique. It is exactly how I enter a crowded Costco.
His morning begins differently from mine. I require coffee to raise my core temperature; he requires sunlight. Being cold-blooded, he must find a warm spot and bask before becoming fully operational. Until then, he is the reptilian equivalent of a retired physician before his second cup.
Once sufficiently warmed, he begins looking for breakfast. Brown anoles eat insects, spiders, small arthropods, and occasionally anything else they can overpower without prior authorization. There is no avocado toast, no bran cereal, and no discussion of whether eggs raise his LDL.
His diet is high in protein, locally sourced, and entirely unprocessed. His food also tries to escape, which provides built-in exercise and portion control.
I wondered when he dines. Anoles are active during the day, generally hunting when warmth and available prey make the effort worthwhile. There are no reservations. No maître d’. No early-bird special. Lunch may be an ant at 10:17, a spider at 11:42, and, if fortune smiles, a plump beetle before cocktails.
His social life is equally complicated.
Brown anoles do not have friends in the human sense. There is no regular foursome, no dinner group, and no neighborhood email chain complaining about the landscaping. Their social network is built around territory, mating, intimidation, and the constant monitoring of neighbors—which, come to think of it, is not entirely different from ours.
A male may announce himself with head bobs, push-up displays, and the extension of his brightly colored throat fan, called a dewlap. This is the anole version of posting a flattering photograph on Facebook while claiming to have “just finished a light workout.”
The message is simple:
“I am strong. This wall belongs to me. Females may approach. Other males should keep moving.”
I also do push-ups, although nobody has interpreted them as a territorial claim, and extending my throat would probably result in a referral to an otolaryngologist.
Then there are predators.
My anole must watch for birds, snakes, larger lizards, outdoor cats, and perhaps an egret wandering through the neighborhood with the focused expression of someone approaching a seafood buffet. Even while hunting, basking, or displaying for a female, part of his nervous system remains devoted to not becoming lunch.
I understand this vigilance, although my predators are more abstract: coronary artery disease, loss of muscle mass, elevated Lp(a), and an enthusiastic golfer in the group behind me who believes every par five is reachable in two.
The anole’s escape plan is impressive. He can sprint, leap, climb vertically, hide in vegetation, and, in an emergency, detach his tail. The discarded tail continues wriggling, distracting the predator while the lizard escapes.
Humans have no equivalent mechanism. If confronted by danger, I cannot detach my left knee and scurry behind the sofa—although there are mornings when abandoning it seems worth considering.
By evening, the anole will find a protected perch and sleep. If all goes well, he will have eaten, defended his territory, avoided being eaten, possibly impressed a female, and maintained his position on the wall.
My objectives are remarkably similar.
I hope to eat sensibly, exercise, protect my territory, communicate with my social network, avoid major predators, and remain attractive enough that my wife continues to tolerate me. Neither of us expects immortality. We are simply attempting to finish the day with all essential body parts still attached.
For several minutes, the anole and I continued watching each other.
Perhaps he saw an aging mammal holding a steaming cup and performing peculiar stretches. I saw a remarkably successful immigrant beginning his day without coffee, Medicare, statins, or a personal trainer.
Then he darted up the wall and disappeared.
I returned to my exercises.
We each had work to do.
