Escaped Lizard Gives Neighbors a Big Scare

DANA POINT —  Sheriff’s deputies and animal control officers launched a four-hour search for an escaped monitor lizard in a residential neighborhood Tuesday, capturing it in a gully 100 yards from its home with the help of a neighbor, sheriff’s officials said.

The lizard--about 3 1/2 feet long--walked out the front door of a home on Terraza del Mar about 2 p.m. when a resident inadvertently left the door open, said Lt. Richard Paddock.

Paddock said the owner, Blake Bryant, first told authorities that the lizard was 8 feet long, prompting an urgent search in neighboring back yards that alarmed residents.

“The police came by and told us to get ‘Get inside and keep the door closed,’ ” said one neighbor, whose granddaughters refused to come out of the house for hours until an animal control officer carried the lizard to a waiting truck about 5:45 p.m.

“It gives me a little creepy feeling,” the woman said. “Some of the neighbors were kind of upset. The girls were scared. That’s pretty frightening to think that it could come over to your yard.”

Ten sheriff’s deputies, three animal control officers and a state Department of Fish and Game official took part in the search with the help of a helicopter. But it was a neighbor toting binoculars who finally spotted the lizard in a gully.

“She located it and yelled, and officers were able to find the thing and start the capture,” Paddock said.

Paddock said the animal was captured “without incident.”

Officials were eager to find it, just in case it might present a danger to the public, he said.

“We just wanted to catch it,” he said.