Free Republic

After a night of desperate searching, a woman discovered the mutilated remains of her beloved cat on the muddy bank of a canal near her Cape Coral home. She believes a large, ravenous and invasive lizard committed the heinous act. A now infamous name among Cape households, Nile monitors are cold- blooded predators introduced into the city sometime before 1990. These reptiles, which grow to a length of 7 feet, have proliferated, devouring just about everything in their path, including small mammals, snakes, shellfish, eggs and even juvenile alligators. It was a Nile monitor that may have eaten Suzanne Spana's...

CAPE CORAL -- Gregg Klowden and Zach Reffner wage war against lizards. BIG ones. In the battle to rid Southwest Florida of the 7-foot invader known as the Nile monitor, speed is essential. "The lizards can climb a tree like a shot out of hell, swim like a fish and outrun a man," said Klowden, a University of Florida-trained biologist. "They do everything but fly." These über lizards, first spotted in Cape Coral in 1990, have taken to the Florida sun so well that they're thriving. Because the rapacious reptiles are such skilled hunters, biologists worry they will devastate endangered...