Here we go again. If you don't live in central Florida you have Know idea how ridiculous this gets. The last time this happened it was in Cassleberry a suburb on the North side of Orlando (Edgewood is on the south side). They were totally obsessed with the Nile that was loose then and misinformation was flying left and right. The monitor in that episode was about 4ft. long (that I could tell by the video.) and according to them ...get this... It weighed 80lbs!!! that's right 80lbs!!! My Nile monitor of 14yrs who recently passed away was 5and1/2ft(probably would have been 6 if he hadn't whacked off parts of his tail in younger years.) and I'll bet he didn't weigh 20lbs and he was always a little on the heavy side. The escaped nile was finally shot by police which is really safe considering this area is extremely overpopulated by another more harmful historically non-indigenous species that causes great enviromental damage. I am assuming that the oompa woompas came by and rolled this 80lb 4ft nile away as it has not been seen since. Some of the "facts" that they come up with about nile monitors were totally ridiculous too It was claimed that they got to (I am not making this up!) 250lbs! That's Probably big even for a Komodo and if if one of my waters weighed this much I would definately be looking out for the oompa woompas (really if one of my waters weighed that much I would be afraid it would explode.) Even more ridiculous than the weight was the other factoid I caught on the news was (and I am not making this up either.) was that they (monitors) can whip you with their poisonous Tail.(I swear to God I am not making that up I really heard tha!!!) Of course then there was the standard lock up your pets and children crap which I find comical. In adition to playing with Monitors and other lizards I keep lots of boids (Brazillians, Argentines, balls etc.) and raise my own rodents. I have one large male Argentine and a male D'albert's python and a small female green anaconda (8ft.) who all take adutl rats and are all picky sporadic eaters. My point here is that I often feed my monitors rodents passed up by the snakes (I hate wasting Rodents) and I wish to God I could have gotten my Nile to regularly take full-sized rats. Most of the time If he would take them at all he would rip them to shreds and make a mess and most times he wouldn't even do that. I realize that Chihuahuas and Min-pins are small but for God's sake there not THAT small.

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