Wham bam, thank you Ma’am

I love Americans’ kindness, generosity and energy but am often thrown by their exaggerated politeness and euphemistic speech. They use ‘passed’ for ‘died’ and always say ‘excuse me’ if they brush against you in a shop. They sentimentally refer to ‘your puppy’ when the dog is patently over three years old. They refer to a dog’s ‘going to the bathroom’. And why say ‘a grown man’ instead of just ‘man’? Wads of paper napkins are handed out unnecessarily in cafés and at parties (where one is sometimes offered ‘a beverage’ instead of a drink). But Americans can also be unexpectedly bloodthirsty and violent and I find this contrast disconcerting.

On my recent visit to Key West, once a town with a reputation for lawlessness and bohemianism, but now, owing to the influx of tourist couples in their late seventies and eighties, somewhat twee and overpriced, I was shocked by the aggression shown by otherwise warm-hearted friends towards the wildlife. Iguanas — not indigenous to Florida — are hated, as they eat garden plants and poo in swimming pools. Betty, raised on a Midwest farm with no electricity, who now lives in Key West with her husband six months a year, shocked me and our animal-loving friend, a retired professor, by declaring: ‘You have to shoot them so that they bleed from the belly!’ My friend murmured a protest but Betty maintained that iguanas had no right to destroy her garden.

Another cheerful winter resident was hellbent on killing a tree rat (a squirrel) who’d eaten left-out food and the strap of her best sandal.

I visited my friend Roxanne. It should have been less than a two-hour drive to her house from Miami airport, but that morning a ‘grown man’ had abducted and shot his own partner (I’m not sure in what order), before driving the wrong way down the I-95, causing at least three accidents.