Super Bowl XLIV, Frozen Iguanas, Dead Dogs and Victorious Saints

My brother arranged for he, my father and I to go to the Super Bowl this past weekend. This professional American football championship is the most important annual sporting event in the U.S. This was my first time attending this beautiful, crazy, huge event.  To top off the amazing atmosphere, the game (usually a lopsided letdown) was fantastic and the underdogs won! The game was played between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints.  In my few previous NFL games the atmosphere had been very stuffy, corporate, and sedate. The New Orleans fans, however, brought a sincerity and enthusiasm usually reserved for collegiate sports.  A good spectrum of Louisiana culture was represented and they were hugely grateful and gracious in victory.  For one day, at least, most Americans outside the state of Indiana were Saints.

There is a sleazy side to the Super Bowl with drunkards, call girls and gambling but, on the whole, the electric buzz on the streets, the well organized events with incredible musical talents (The Who kicked butt), and the game's cast of interesting and inspiring characters left me with a unique and very positive memory of time well spent with my brother, father, and some of their friends.

The most interesting side story from Super Bowl South Florida involved the recent cold spell which plunged Miami temperatures below freezing- a rare event.  Large iguanas (up to three feet long) sitting in the trees around Miami froze to death (being cold-blooded creatures taking on the ambient temperature) and fell to the ground.  The dead iguanas laying all about the weeks before the game was a mildly interesting story, but it got better. Dogs began to eat the decaying iguanas. That would have been no problem except a toxin emitting bacteria was growing in the reptilian corpses. Dog owners began to notice their dogs hind-legs no longer functioned and within a day several dogs were dead with respiratory muscle paralysis. Veterinarians were puzzled with this strange presentation but one astute fellow figured out that the dogs were suffering from botulism and then connected the dots with the dead iguanas. After comparing this story with a recent one out of Auckland where dogs were dying of tetrodotoxin poisoning after eating jellyfish washed up on the New Zealand beaches I have learned that dogs will eat anything and then suffer greatly for it.