Paradise Palms, my botanical garden in Delray Beach, must be home to a thousand iguanas. They are not particularly good-looking creatures. Some can be downright weird. And big. They can grow to four feet.

But they pose no immediate danger to small dogs and toddlers, as the alligators do. We hunt and kill the alligators, but since iguanas are herbivores, we let them do their thing.

Iguanas are one of many invasive species that are multiplying exponentially here in my home state of Florida. We also have exploding populations of pythons, cane toads, lionfish, and giant African land snails – to name just a few!

Should we, as suggested by a recent article in National Geographic, fight back in what it calls “an extremely Florida war”? Or should we shrug it off? (As JS says, “Hey! If you live in a jungle, you have to expect this sort of thing!”)

Have you heard of the Stella Awards? 

I hadn’t… until one of my high school buddies clued me in. They are named in honor of Stella Liebeck, the 79-year-old woman that sued McDonald’s after she spilled hot coffee on herself and suffered third-degree burns. Apparently, she took the lid off the coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving. Amazingly, she won her case.

These are the top 5 Stella Award winners for 2020:

5th PLACE – Terrence Dickson, of Bristol, PA, was leaving a house he had just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the door to open. Worse, he couldn’t re-enter the house because the door connecting the garage to the house locked when he pulled it shut. Forced to sit for eight, count ‘em, EIGHT days and survive on a case of Pepsi and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner’s insurance company, claiming undue mental anguish. The jury found in his favor, ordering the insurance company to pay Dickson $500,000 for his anguish.

4th PLACE – Jerry Williams, of Little Rock, AR, was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the butt by his neighbor’s beagle – even though the dog was on a chain in its owner’s fenced yard. Williams did not get as much as he asked for because the jury believed the dog might have been provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot it with a pellet gun.

3rd PLACE – Amber Carson, of Lancaster, PA, because a jury ordered a Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke her tailbone. The reason the soft drink was on the floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.

2nd PLACE – Kara Walton, of Claymont, DE, sued the owner of a nightclub in a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the nightclub had to pay her $12,000… oh, yeah, plus dental expenses.

1st PLACE – This year’s runaway Stella Award winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski, of Oklahoma City, OK. On her way home after purchasing a new 32-foot Winnebago motor home, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and left the driver’s seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed, and overturned. Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner’s manual that she couldn’t leave the driver’s seat while the cruise control was set. The Oklahoma jury awarded her $1,750,000.  PLUS a new motor home. (Winnebago actually changed the wording in its manuals as a result of this suit.)