One minute, the 6-foot, 2-inch Nile monitor lizard was anticipating a tasty meal of raw, smelly chicken scraps.
The next, the door swung closed behind it, and the exotic reptile — estimated to be the second-largest ever captured in the city — was a statistic in Cape Coral’s effort to erase its current distinction as holding the largest population of the 4- to 7-foot lizards in the United States.
“I know they’re a big threat to our wildlife population, especially the gopher tortoise and the burrowing owl,” said Conny Spurfeld, who set the trap that snagged the 40-pound lizard, which was just an inch short of the record. “I have made it my mission to help burrowing owls and gopher tortoises survive. ... No question, (monitor lizards are) my personal enemy.”
Spurfeld, 44, who is majoring in biology at Florida Gulf Coast University and an intern for Cape Coral, said she had caught five monitor lizards in four days. That includes the big one, which she nicknamed “Moby Dick” because of its considerable size.
It was so big, it couldn’t stretch out in its 6-foot-long cage. It lost part of its tail when the door slammed behind it. Because most of the lizard’s length is its tail, it can manage to stay in the confined space with relative comfort, said Harry Phillips, an environmental technician for the city of Cape Coral.
“We know there are bigger ones out there,” Phillips said. “But it’s a rarity we get lizards that big.”
The only larger monitor lizard caught in the Cape was 6 feet, 3 inches in August 2004, before Hurricane Charley roared through the region. Only one other Nile monitor lizard longer than 5 feet has been trapped. That came in October 2005, when a 5-foot, 3-inch lizard was snagged.
The 74-inch monster wandered into a trap set near Veterans Parkway and Surfside Boulevard, on the northern fringe of the spreader canal.
“We’ve caught a lot of lizards out of that canal,” Phillips said. “We feel that’s kind of an alley. They get backed up in there. Because there is no culvert under Veterans Parkway, they congregate.”
To be sure, the behemoth is the fifth monitor lizard Cape trappers have caught in the last two weeks from that area alone.
Surfside Boulevard resident Bobbie Williams knows all too well the habits of two 4-foot Nile monitor lizards during the last several months.
She said she sees them the same time every day at about 3 to 4 p.m.
“They go across the canal,” she said. “They go into the grass for a while. Then they come back after a couple of hours.”
She wants them gone.
“We have grandchildren,” she said. “The people next door have two small dogs. I’m not comfortable with them in my community.”
The typical monitor lizard’s diet includes rodents, reptiles, amphibians, birds, small mammals, insects, whole eggs and carrion. They are not believed to pose a threat to humans.
What made the big lizard stand out was not only its length, but also its girth. Many of the giant lizards weigh about 10 to 20 pounds and measure 3 to 4 feet in length. But this 6-footer appears to be about 40 pounds, Phillips said.
The lizards aren’t officially weighed until they are euthanized. That usually happens fairly quickly.
But the city is holding onto this lizard because a crew from RS-Film of Germany wants to film the reptile next week as part of a documentary it is putting together on Nile monitor lizards across the world.
Phillips said the monitor lizard would be killed after the filming unless it becomes too difficult to keep calm before the television crew arrives.
Spurfeld said she has found other animals sometimes drawn to the traps she sets, including raccoons, possums — and, nearly, an alligator.
“I was closing the traps for the night a couple of weeks ago, and I had an alligator — a big one — trying to get into a trap,” she said. “He couldn’t fit in. He was a good-sized alligator. If the trap would have closed, it just would have been on his face.”
Phillips said some of the bigger Nile monitor lizards get cocky and pick fights with alligators. That’s a foolish choice.
“The alligators typically win that fight,” he said. “They’re better designed for bringing something under water, drowning it and eating it. Alligators rip their prey to shreds; the monitors swallow their prey whole.”
Gators may prove to be an ally in the Cape’s fight against the unwanted Nile monitor lizards.
“The alligator may see the monitor as an easy prey,” Phillips said.
“The monitor eats eggs, so the monitor could potentially eat gators’ young. But we haven’t seen that. Alligators do protect their nests, while monitors tend to leave their eggs behind.”
Spurfeld said that even though Nile monitor lizards are her “personal enemy,” she does have a soft spot for them. Well, sort of.
“I feel sorry for them, I honestly do,” she said. “Human beings put them here in our environment. They don’t belong here. It’s like they jumped on a plane and picked the county.
“... But if I would have enough money, I would put all of them on an airplane and send them back to Africa.”
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