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ORLANDO SENTINEL (Florida) 24 September 05 Shades of Loch Ness: Lizard lore mounting - From a neighborhood in Deltona comes a coldblooded tale of monitor mystery. (Erin Ailworth)
Deltona: The giant lizard dines on stray cats. It menaces people with its hiss, and, with each sighting, the mystery around it grows.
At least, that's what the neighbors say.
The mini-Godzilla -- a Nile monitor lizard -- has been lurking around their Opal Court cul-de-sac for months, possibly years. They have enough grainy photos of the African predator to prove it.
"Interested?" one man asks from a door that he has cracked open just far enough to pop out his head.
He briefly disappears inside with a terse, "Stay right where you are." He then returns with a fuzzy printout of his next-door neighbor's fence. The nearly 3-foot lizard is a brown streak that blends into the fence.
The man said he has seen the monitor once. His wife has seen it twice.
"Animal control didn't really want to talk about it," the man says. "It was April 8."
Kristen Hathaway remembers that day well. The 20-year-old was the first to spot the monitor while looking for her Chihuahua pup.
"I was like 'Kiwi, come here,' " Hathaway said. She didn't have her glasses on and mistook the lizard for her dog. Then she got closer.
"I was like, OK, that's not my dog," Hathaway said. Then she ran -- for a camera.
"No one is going to believe that this thing is in my cul-de-sac, so that's why I took pictures," she said.
Hathaway and her neighbors went public about the sighting after Hathaway's friends read a recent news story about the fleet-footed, raptorlike predators.
The lizards have invaded Cape Coral -- the estimated monitor population is 1,000 -- and officials in nearby Sanibel, where a resident recently photographed a monitor lizard in her backyard, are worried that they too will be invaded.
Though the lizards are definitely out of place in Deltona's bedroom community, this is not the first time a monitor has been spotted in the area, officials said.
"It's not unusual for [Deltona] animal control to pick up monitor lizards," said city spokeswoman Jeannine Gage.
Local animal-control officers usually find two or three of the lizards a year. Officials said they bagged a monitor somewhere in the city Thursday.
The giant lizards -- which experts say can grow to lengths of 7 feet and lay as many as 84 eggs at a time -- are often kept as exotic pets, Gage said, and when they get too big their owners let them go.
The neighbors on Opal Court think their monitor, which some have nicknamed Montey, is an escapee.
Hathaway said a neighbor told her that another resident used to keep the lizard as a pet, but one day it got out.
"He said it's been in the woods, running in between the houses for a few years now," Hathaway said. "And they [neighbors who see it] always call animal control, but animal control says it's too fast, and they can never catch it."
More rumors abound.
Some neighbors think the monitor has found a human ally who has been feeding the thing raw chicken from a back porch.
Some think the monitor is responsible for the declining number of stray cats in the area.
Others are nonchalant about the whole thing.
On Friday morning, Opal Court resident Jean Richards pulled her yellow bathrobe around her pajamas as she talked about the lizard, which she says she has never seen.
"I wouldn't go up to it," she said, adding that she knows about the lizards' nasty reputation. Her son used to keep one, but that monitor died.
Farther down the street, Julio Chapunoff bent to pick up his morning paper, clearly unconcerned about the monitor but humored by the hype about the creature.
As he walked back to his door, he chuckled and wondered aloud if he will soon see headlines declaring "Lizard Invades Deltona! Pets Tied Up."
"There's a lot to eat around here," Chapunoff said. "He probably won't go anywhere if he's happy and his belly is full."
Shades of Loch Ness: Lizard lore mounting

"The giant lizard dines on stray cats."

"The nearly 3-foot lizard is a brown streak that blends into the fence."

Haha wow 3 foot it sure is a Giant. Must be some small cats in that community.

84 eggs?????????

has anyone informed these folks there are alligators in the canals and swamps! Wow, just think if they spotted an alligator, their world would end. What about sharks in the ocean? do they know that. Oh man, horned owls eat cats and skunks, do they know that. I wonder is an adult ratsnake would consume a chichiwhowa pup? hmmmmmmmmmm nasty tasting I bet.

More nonsense to reinforce ignorance, kinda like needing to dip pinkies in calicum. With this in mind, I wonder how accurate the rest of the newpaper articules are? Hey didn't they say the death toll for Katrina would exceed ten thou, only off a little on that one. FR

Seems they can report whatever they can make up in their heads now a days. I thought that was only reserved for the inquirer.

I still find it amazing all of these reptile keepers down here and they have yet to talk to one of us. Instead they talk to this biologist thats out to capture and cull all of these niles. Then he claims numbers such as 84 eggs. I must be doing something wrong cause my female niles never drop that many.

Yes it seems they have forgotten about all of the native animals that too could be dangerous or gobble up little feefee or mittens.