Their Version Of Squirrels

Alright, first off, I’d like to show you a picture and see if you could find what is in the picture. Click on the picture, take a gander and then scroll down to read the rest of the post.

Did you see it? Kinda hard to see at first because they camouflage themselves so well but there is an iguana right there on one of those branches.

This picture I took near the end of our tour of Manuel Antonio, a Costa Rican town with a national park by the same name. Here is a close-up of our hidden friend.

Down in Manuel Antonio, iguanas are everywhere. Now, we actually saw iguanas on our first day here, when we first explored the beach. They were at the end of the bench, near what turned out to be the park exit.

There were two, and I tried to get up close to one.

That iguana, though, was having none of me. I tried to get close but the iguana darted away from me before I got too close. These iguanas may look menacing but we found out that they are really not - at least, not to us.

They are omnivores, which means they eat both plants and animals. They stay away from people but do need to find sun to get their body temperatures up.

And sometimes you’ll come across one in your path because that’s where the sun is. Still, whenever we got close to one, they scurried away.

Now, to me they remind me of squirrels back home, in that squirrels are everywhere and I don’t often pay them any attention. I’m guessing that’s what it’s like down here.

The locals probably see an iguana and think nothing of it. I didn’t quite get to that point, as evidenced by all the pictures of iguanas I took.