One answere could be that they all hitch a lift on a 'plane to Italy; but it is more likely that they find a nice place to go into deep hibernation and sleep the winter away.

lots of buildings with access for them to keep warm next to the heating pipes.

I love lizards in fact all the reptiles.

They escaped from a pet shop some years ago and took up residence in my back yard. They are a gardeners best friend eating all the pesky bugs. It's always been a riddle to me how they survive the long brutally cold New York Winters. Thank You for your responses.

Italy can be perishingly cold in the winter. Just take a look at Gatina's home page photos, the snow in some of them is very deep.

That's interesting. Thanks

Their favorite habitats are the rocks in railroad beds and that's how they spread around Long Island (this is info obtained from a web search). I lived for a while in Elmhurst Queens once I moved out of Manhatten in the 1970's and saw a few of these sunning themselves on a concrete railroad bridge abutment of the LIRR. I assume they overwinter in basements or deep in the railroad rock piles. I could have used a few of those in my apartment to gobble up some croton-bugs:) Until you had mentioned it, I had forgotten all about those little immigrants from Italy and I always thought that they were natural residents of the area. Thank You.

Wish we had some here - newts are nice but not as jazzy!

My goodness Steragram, don't say that. We've enough problems with their bloody rainbow trout and grey squirrels.

If you have a rainbow trout problem, I still am good at depleting that population with a zug bug tied to my flyline:)

You'll get arrested for exposure for that. LOL.

Rainbow trout are so easy to catch and not much sport, that's why all these trout fisheries are stocking their waters with them. The kids love to fish for them as they will go for anything and the owners make lots of money. They don't taste as nice as our indigenous brown trout and create a problem.

I regularly fish for trout and salmon in Scotland, one of the trout farms went bust and just broke his banks and let all the water run into the nearby river. The result was that all the aggressive rainbow trout took over the river which decimated the local brown trout, the same as grey squirrels are wiping out the red squirrels. The result... The river is virtually un-fishable.

The same thing is happening with many other animal and plant species that's being introduced to this country. Other countries like The USA and particularly Australia are very strict about things like this for a good reason. But we just allow any thing or anybody into the country and reap the consequences. Rant over. Agggh.

We have our share of problems here in the U.S. too. Namely the Snake Head fish wiping out native species, another is the Bullfrog killing off native species. These were peoples' pets that were abandoned or set free unlawfully. They upset the delicate eco systems of lakes and ponds all over.

Trout from fishing ponds can taste disgusting. We were given some once and they tasted like the mud at the bottom of the pond...nothing like the lovely sweet flesh of a river trout.

Sorry Myron, you're quite right. I will be content with un-jazzy British ones, but we don't get them either...

You're totally correct. Farmed trout, and especially farmed salmon taste nothing like wild caught. Wild salmon and trout have to work for their food instead of just lazing around waiting their next feed of fish food pellets and so aren't as tasty, main;y because they don't develop muscles. The water is also stocked to maximum capacity so this also causes problems with the fish attacking each other.

I try to buy wild salmon from the fish market when it's in season. Unfortunately a lot of these market traders try to palm off farmed salmon as wild, but you can tell at a glance if it's wild or not. Wild salmon has a larger more powerful tail fin developed through getting from the sea and leaping up the river.

I once asked a fish stall owner if the salmon was wild? He said, "WILD! It was bloody livid when it was caught".