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Frozen Iguanas and Mike Lindell: Both losing their grips

AP Photo/Chris Seward

As if Florida couldn’t get any weirder, two spectacular absurdities have crept onto the radar screen this week, just in time to compete with Santa’s dash around the globe.

While each is unique in its own bizarre way, if you squint just right, it’s possible to see that both marvels are part of the Great Confluence that is nutty-on-steroids daily life in the Sunshine State.

One is associated with the blast of Arctic winter soon to sweep down the Peninsula. The other is simply a gust of (with all due respect to the Mother Ship) hot air. Cutting to the chase: One absurdity involves the operation of a reptilian-like intellect. The other involves giant lizards.

Say hello, then, to honorary Florida Man Mike Lindell and the state’s most fascinating saurian, the green iguana, soon to be plopping, inert, on bike paths, car hoods, rooftops, and unsuspecting pedestrians pretty much everywhere an hour south of Gainesville.

Christmas weekend will be uncommonly chilly in Florida, with temperatures sliding into upper Snow Miser territory. Freeze alerts are out for Central Florida as far north as Walt Disney World and Daytona Beach. Meanwhile, South Beach denizens are being advised to dig out jackets and closed-toed shoes.

Cold weather means difficult times for green iguanas, invaders from Central and South America that typically thrive from Key West to Orlando. As cold-blooded creatures, iguanas grow sluggish when temperatures reach the 50s, and can slip into a state of suspended animation in the low 40s and below.

Because they are tree-dwellers, and clinging to branches requires some level of active consciousness, torporific iguanas are known to plummet from their perches like sacks of plantains.

Stretching up to 5 feet long and weighing about 17 pounds, iguanas tumbling from, say, an 80-foot sabal palm (at 32 feet per second per second) can cause a bit of damage at the termination of their plunge. Which is why, standing in for the National Weather Service (whose alerts are unofficial), the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission issued warnings for “icy, invasive iguanas” through Boxing Day.

Add another reason not to stand under trees in Florida during severe weather. Or park cars, for that matter.

Also thudding, insensate, onto the state’s already wacked-out calendar is the aforementioned MyPillow guy, the peddler of sweet dreams and, lately, the embracer of nightmare election-tampering conspiracies. His target now: Gov. Ron DeSantis, who surfed atop Florida’s red tsunami election last month.

On his web show Tuesday, Lindell declared himself, without evidence, a skeptic. The source of his cocked eyebrow: DeSantis’ triumph in usually blue Miami-Dade County.

“I look at deviations, everybody. That’s a deviation. I don’t believe it,” Lindell said, later adding that “I’m going to find out if [Miami-]Dade County – what happened there, because it’s a deviation from norm.”

We needn’t rehearse Miami-Dade’s election fluidity here. More important is the reason behind Lindell’s hyperventilating. In the weeks since the midterms, DeSantis has become the darling of Republicans polled about their preference for a presidential nominee. And he’s not even an announced candidate.

Meanwhile, the prospects of Election-Denier-in-Chief Donald Trump, who has hoisted his banner, have nosedived like a scaly snowcone.

But Lindell is Trump’s loyal pal and partner in unfounded recrimination, so the early hard evidence of DeSantis’ persuadability must be yet another sinister game invented by ballot counters. Or something. Lindell vows to smother DeSantis’ eye-popping triumph in personal resources.

God love the man for his personal turnaround, but recent activities suggest he has not completely banished his addiction gene. (I get it; I cannot pass a Titleist display without adding a dozen yellow Tour Softs; each of us probably needs an intervention.)

Just now, Floridians are braced for 72 hours of frigid temps and dodging thumping squamates; next week, we and our lizard neighbors shall warm up and resume normal activities.

We wish a similar thawing for Lindell, whose stolen-election carnival barking reveals the sort of refrigerated intellect that, as Floridians shall soon witness, is associated with losing your grip.

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John Stossel 8:30 AM | December 22, 2024
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