Them

In a creepy kind of way, one of the funniest holiday stories I have is about our first Christmas living in South Florida. In 1990 my husband was transferred, so we moved from northern California to Davie, Florida. Davie is a sleepy little town filled with orange groves, located in Broward County near the Everglades.

Life in South Florida was alien and bizarre. The first wildlife we came across in the yard of our new house was a huge toad that looked like a cowpie (for those of you who do not know what a cowpie is, visit this link http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=cowpie) As my four year old son was bending down to pick it up, that funny little something in my gut warned me not to let him touch it. Come to find out, it was a Bufo toad - an exotic pest imported by sugar cane farmers in the 1930s to eat rats and mice in the cane breaks. Bufo toads excrete a poison when disturbed that when ingested can kill a small dog. Welcome to the tropics!

We discovered many other strange creatures living in the tropics. We had lizards in the house called geckos. They are supposed to bring good luck. I figured the good luck was that they ate all the bugs the size of small dogs that got into my house (how bugs this size got in I never figured out). Mostly they scared the crap out of me when they suddenly darted out from their hiding places while I was vacuuming or dusting. I had one jump on my head once and screamed so loudly my neighbors came running. And when you try to catch these critters, their tails come off and wriggle around while the lizard escapes - yuck!

Not only was the wild life strange, the local holiday decorating customs were too. It seemed to me that because there is no snow or even cold weather in South Florida, folks living there tried to compensate by creating extravagant displays of lights, fake snow, wooden snowmen with wooden candy canes, and various animated figurines, including a baby Jesus that wet the manager, and pooping reindeer. Evening entertainment during December was to drive through the various neighborhoods looking at the displays. Traffic was worse than rush hour on the beltway. The glow from the lights was probably noticeable from orbit. All I could think of was the scene from the movie National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation where Chevy Chase's power meter was spinning so fast it was a blur.

We thought the decorating customs tacky and rebelled by not placing any outside decorations on the house. We were the only unlit home in the neighborhood. We also rebelled by buying a fresh cut Christmas tree by taking a second mortgage out on the house. It was imported all the way from North Carolina where they can grow Christmas trees, the soil in Florida being too shallow and full of leftover fake snow from years past.

We kept to traditional decorations on the tree as well. It was filled with glass bulbs, tiny lights, handmade ornaments, and tinsel. I even bought peppermint candy canes to hang on the tree. It was hard to find them, hidden on the store shelf amongst the blueberry, tutti-fruity and bubble gum flavored ones. On Christmas Eve, I surveyed the living room, lit by the beautiful traditional tree. I casually lifted a candy cane from the tree and began to unwrap the plastic wrapper when my eye caught movement. Once again that funny little something in my gut warned me not to pop the candy into my mouth. I flipped on the lights and to my horror found the candy cane I was holding swarming with ants. I screamed (of course) but not loud enough to bring the neighbors. Upon investigation, we discovered all the candy canes and the entire tree was swarming with ants!

Now I know why the wooden snowmen have wooden candy canes in South Florida.