UNION-TRIBUNE (San Diego, California) 05 February 06 Lower Otay Lake's lizard is busy livin' large - But abandoning pets is cruel and also wreaks havoc on ecosystems (Ed Zieralski)
I'm not sure how that huge monitor lizard seen recently at Lower Otay Lake found its way there, but I have a couple of theories.
No doubt, the lizard, likely an African savannah or Nile monitor, was someone's pet. But one day, little Thin Lizzy wasn't so thin and little anymore. Maybe it started stalking the family's pet furball of a cat or dog. By all accounts, this lizard is at least 4 feet long. And when monitors get that big they need to eat a lot – a couple of mice a week, maybe a couple of hard-boiled eggs, a couple of tablespoons of dog food or well-cooked lean meats. You get the idea, a grocery list. Maybe the pet's owner couldn't deal with it anymore.
That's when the little lizard that grew was given a nice home along Otay Arm at Lower Otay. Or, maybe the bad boy escaped from a home up on the hills on the west shoreline. Maybe one of our Olympic rowers got tired of dealing with the Olympic-size critter and released it.
However it arrived, Double X Lizzy, or XL Lizzy in honor of today's Super Bowl, is eating and living large at Otay.
I figure more than one unsuspecting cormorant, coot or duck has gone into the tules and been chomped by Otayzilla. A few bass, bluegill, crappie, maybe even one of Otay's other famous monsters, those big blue catfish, found themselves wrestling for life with this 20-to 25-pound green monster.
At least it's not a Komodo dragon, an endangered species and the largest and deadliest lizard in the world. At least we don't think it is. One of those bit San Francisco Chronicle executive editor Phil Bronstein on the foot, crushing a big toe and severing tendons. Bronstein, the former husband of actress Sharon Stone, was on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Los Angeles Zoo that was arranged by Stone in 2001 when the toe attack happened.
This Otay lizard sighting is the latest in the county's long line of run-ins with invasive species that have been dumped into our lakes, rivers and backcountry. The culprits usually are well-intentioned folks who figured they were doing a great thing for their pets. But they're really dumb people who wreak havoc on an often fragile ecosystem.
We've seen caiman in San Vicente and in the San Diego River, pacu at many lakes and ponds, peacock bass in Lake Murray. We had a giant peacock on our roof one morning in Scripps Ranch. Thought some woman was getting attacked in the canyon, but it turned out to be a lost peacock screaming into the chimney. Of all the roofs in all the neighborhoods, it flew up on ours.
San Diego is like Florida in that our climate is conducive to many of these critters once they get set free or break themselves out of pet prison. Florida's battle with invasives and exotic beasts is legendary with tales of Burmese pythons wrestling alligators in the Everglades; ill-tempered African monitor lizards splashing and reproducing (they've caught or killed scores of them) in the canals in Cape Coral; velvet monkeys leaping around a car rental lot near Fort Lauderdale; South African monk parakeets ripping into power lines; Cuban tree frogs colonizing, even gobbling poor, unsuspecting native frogs.
It's all enough to make a herpetologist spin, and it really must rile those protectors of all that is natural and wild.
We haven't heard from any of the watchdog citizen naturalists who spend every waking moment fussing and worrying about invasive species and their critters of critical concern. But maybe Double X Lizzy has eaten a few California gnatcatchers or, heaven forbid, one of those rare orange-throated whiptail lizards. All that after millions of dollars have been spent for multiple species conservation, all going the way of the lizard's forked tongue.
Thus far, the monitor, which has the strength to tear off a cat's head with one twist, hasn't tongue-lashed a float-tuber or bit into some shoreline angler. That would get our attention. We take comfort in knowing no human has ever been killed by a large monitor in the United States. Monitor-lovers point out that domestic dogs kill 10 to 15 people a year.
Lizard tales are popular among police officers, who often are called out to check on reports of crawl-away lizards. In Stamford, Conn., one report described “the subject as 7 feet long, with a 4-foot body and 3-foot tail; four short legs; long, pointed, narrow head; 2˝-foot tongue; weight about 25 pounds” and having a preference for eating rats and small dead animals. Now, now, forget the lawyer and judge jokes here.
At Lower Otay, we just hope and pray Double X Lizzy leaves our lil' float-tubers alone.
Abandoning pets is cruel and also wreaks havoc on ecosystems