Lgf lizardoids strike again!
SANIBEL · Wildlife biologist Kendra Willett searched the teeming waters of Tarpon Bay by boat, catching quick glimpses of a stingray, a manatee, a diving osprey and a leaping dolphin. But it was the creature she couldn't find that worried Willett and other officials and residents on this posh island retreat with a 6,400-acre national wildlife refuge. The Nile monitor, a cunning, carnivorous lizard of voracious appetite that has already put fear in the hearts of many in nearby Cape Coral, has made its way across San Carlos Bay to Sanibel.
"We have more than 1,300 waterfowl nests on some of our satellite island rookeries, and we already have reports of Nile monitor lizards on Pine Island and Sanibel," Willett said as she looked for signs of the invader last month. "If these big lizards establish a breeding population and discover the rookeries as a food source, the birds may abandon them."
This is not a gecko-sized problem. And herons, terns and cormorants aren't the only species endangered. Nile monitors are large, non-native predators capable of wreaking havoc on indigenous wildlife -- and people, too. "I got a shovel and chased one that hissed at me in my yard. When it ran past the neighbor's house, it saw his reflection in a window and lunged into it so hard I thought it would break," said Steve Sebesta of Cape Coral, where nearly 1,000 of the lizards are thought to be prowling despite a 2-year-old eradication program. | Put a bounty on their heads, that'll thin them out |
After reported sightings of the lizards on Pine Island, between Cape Coral and Sanibel, wildlife experts went on the alert. And when a Sanibel resident photographed a Nile monitor in her backyard, city officials put out a warning to the island's more than 6,000 residents. Sanibel Police Chief Bill Tomlinson said traps were being set in the area where the monitor was photographed. A news release issued by Sanibel City Manager Judie Zimomra warned residents of "an imminent threat." "Removal of this dangerous exotic lizard is a priority to the sustainability of our island's environmental health, and we are treating it as such," Zimomra said. At risk are the island's snails, clams, crabs, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, including domestic pets, even human babies, the city manager said. | If you happen to leave your baby lying in the backyard |
The lizards are not as bulky as alligators but can grow to 7 feet. Though they normally flee humans, they can become aggressive when cornered. Cape Coral residents have encountered Nile monitors raised up on their rear legs, slashing out with their curved claws and whipping at them with powerful tails. This lizard's arsenal also includes a powerful bite and a pungent "squiddy smell" they emit when threatened, according to biologists. These long-necked, forked-tongue natives of Africa's Nile River basin have been imported and bred as exotic pets in the United States.
A veteran alligator trapper lassoed a 6-foot-long Nile monitor lizard with an electric cord and tied it to his dock before calling environmental biologist Kraig Hankins one day, he said. "But my favorite was this lady who shot and killed a footlong monitor lizard with the BB gun she'd just gotten her son for Christmas last year," the biologist recalled. "She wanted me to come and pick it up before her son got home. It seems she'd told him that people should never shoot what they weren't going to eat." | Lizard, the other white meat. |
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