Shades of Loch Ness: Lizard lore mounting
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.
