I work indoors.

I like air-conditioning. I like sitting in comfortable chairs. Call me lazy if you want. You're probably right.

So. I work indoors, but there are many windows where I work. And there are many lizards on the outside ledges of those windows.

Staring at us. Mocking us?

Anyway. I work with people, not lizards. And most of the people I work with are from up North (as, for the record, am I).

And when they see these reptilian creatures, they immediately begin talking about "those geckos." The only problem is, they aren't actually geckos. They are anoles.

Brown anoles, usually. A rare green anole pops up from time to time. And a skink appears on even rarer occasions.

But never, not once, a "gecko.'

Have the mildly-amusing Geico ads played a role in this ignorance? Probably. But I suspect the larger culprit is typical Yankee idiocy regarding Southern fauna.

Every ant, to a Northerner, it a "fire ant." Even the silly "ghost ants" that tend to find a home in residential bathrooms are derided as "fire ants" or, for the even more ignorant, merely "red ants."

Northerners go crazy when they see a palmetto bug. They assume, due to their size, that these are truly monstrous cockroaches, the most vile of their kind.

Actually, palmetto bugs are pretty benign. They do not infest homes in the same manner than other, smaller roaches do. The tend to spend their lives in palm trees, not bothering humans a bit.

While real Floridians are spending hundreds of dollars on pest-control services to eliminate Oriental or German cockroach infestations from their homes, these Yankees buffoons are going bat-shit over a bug that accidentally flew in the front door.

Look. I don't mind that people from the North move down here. I am one of you!

But just don't be an asshole about the indigenous wildlife here. Get a fucking grip. Learn a little before you rant about those evil "red ants" and "giant roaches."

A new resident complaining about Florida's pests is like a Southerner moving to NYC and bitching about the quality of air. I mean, deal with it!