Animals / Wildlife

Check out www.smilinglizard.com

IslandJoan just posted that the other day on another post and it's a really great site that has pictures of a lot of different creatures that live in the VI

Thanks so much for your help!

Tracy

The most unusual, on St. Croix at least, is the white tail deer. They live all over the island and are smaller than the deer in Kentucky but larger that the Key deer. We live out in the "country" and see them all the time.

The deer also swim between the islands. I saw one swimming off shore once and have heard of boats driving by them.

Also, STX has the largest population of leatherback sea turtles that nest seasonally from April through July in US Territory. Sandy Point is one of the most important rookeries for Northern Atlantic leatherbacks and the longest studied sea turtle nesting beach in the world. We also have green and hawksbill sea turtle that nest primarily in the late summer through the fall. Juvenile greens and hawksbills can be found year-round in near-shore waters.

Hmm, there is one surviving indigenous mammal, the bat. The other mammal: deer, goats, horses, mongoose, pigs, rats, etc are all imported. There are lizards and snakes (most notably the endangered tree boa, but recent sightings of some very large boa constrictors shows that the tropical environment supports many introduced varieties), iguana, frogs, toads, many insects. There are many bird species, including the introduced (and on my short list for extinction), domestic fowl. Dockside Bookshop has a section of field guides for the various flora and fauna of the area.

Again, Thanks to all!

I was a little shocked to see deer as well. Goats and Horses too huh? I suppose because it is an island, I just never thought that's what you'd find!! Cool though. Very cool.

I'm wigging out a little about the larger snakes and iguana's as well at the furry spiders I read about... Good lord!! None of which I plan on bothering!!!

May I ask how often you come accross these island pets?

On STX you will rarely see iguana's and I've seen some medium size spiders but nothing like the large ones I grew up with in south Texas. Their are no snakes. The mongooses have killed off what there used to be a very long time ago. There are supposedly these very small hand size snakes that are very rare to come across. Scorpions are pretty rare to see as well. All in all the real trouble maker as far as getting in their way and getting stung is the centipede. If your pet gets bitten give them two plain benedryal, if the swelling doesn't go down in an hour then I would call the vet.

My mind is now more at ease. Thank you Betty! I was ready to start buying bug spray and find out how to repel snakes so I could purchase it in bulk as well so I could ship it when the time comes!!! 🙂

LOL....don't ship anything in bulk until you get here. We did so much of that and it was a huge waste of money. Most of what you need you can get here for less then it cost to ship it, but I guess it would be hard to find snake repellant since we don't have any. 😉

I had no idea the deer here swam!