I grew up in South Texas so this doesn't surprise me one bit. It's the same here in Fl. when they find a loose nile monitor no where near as bad as tx. with shooting things but still not good. The last loose nile story around here was 3 or 4 years back in Casselberry (and orlando suburb.

It was on the loose for a few months and then a local cop shot and killed it. The problem with that is this was in a heavily urbanized area and there was a serious danger of stray bullets hitting someone when of course in spite of everyone's ridiculous fears the worst thing the nile would ever do is eat cuban tree frogs and roof rats which in both cases would have been a good thing.

Ironically enough btw for all the hype you hear about pythons and monitors running loose here in Fl. and doing ecological damage You NEVER hear about Cuban tree frogs .

They are a very devastating force on native tree frogs here in Fl. particularly in urban areas. In fact I worked in a neighboring town to casselberry called longwood at a retirement community located on the edge of the wekiva river. There were thousands of cuban tree frogs in the area and in the surrounding woods and no signs of any native tree frogs to be found. Being a groundskeeper there I definitely would have found them if there were. This last freeze knocked their population back pretty hard, I'm sure they aren't all gone but I haven't seen any yet while doing any landscaping work. Hopefully it stays that way.

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