WEST TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — As soon as Lisa Strout saw the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission come up on her phone on Tuesday, she put everything down and headed out.
“Yeah, it’s exciting,” Strout, who volunteers for the FWC, recalled. “You just never know what you’re going to get.”
This time, someone reported seeing a reptile that didn’t belong.
“When they said a monitor lizard,” Strout said. “That is something we’ve never had the opportunity to put our hands on before.”
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But this time, at the corner of Race Track and Douglas Roads in West Tampa, she picked up her first rock monitor lizard.
“Just a little over 4 feet long, including the tail,” Strout recalled. “And it had some power to it. In one of the pictures, I’m holding it and you can really feel the power in the tail.”
According to the FWC’s website, it’s the rock monitor’s relative, the Nile monitor lizard, that’s illegal to have as a pet, and is an invasive species.