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A 4-foot monitor lizard with its head stuck in a toilet was rescued from a home in India after the reptile spent five days hiding out in the bathroom. A Snake Helpline team responded to the home in the Kapileswar Vihar area of Bhubaneswar after a family reported a 4-foot Bengal monitor lizard had been hiding in their bathroom for about five days. The family said they had first spotted the lizard near the toilet Sunday, and they opened a window in the hopes it would climb out, but the lizard was apparently unable to climb the tiled wall to...

I have spent more hours than I'd like to admit in a 7-Eleven. A daily conversation every summer growing up involved my friends and me asking each other how much change we each had and if we should go get a Slurpee and play some arcade games. We'd then scrounge up all our loose change, rifle through the couch to get a few more coins, and then mounted our bikes and headed to "Sev," as we lovingly referred to it. We'd get there, try every flavor or Slurpee, then finally fill up our giant cups with some absurd concoction of...

Trappers are hunting a giant monitor lizard that showed up at a home in Florida and it won’t go away. Zach Lieberman‘s wife spotted the creature by the patio door of the family’s home in Davie. “She started screaming and I’m thinking, ‘What’s going on?,” Lieberman told CBS Miami. He took a look at the creature by the door and went around the house to shoo the large lizard away. But the reptile turned the tables on him. “He followed me. He followed me from right here all the way out to the front of my house,“ Lieberman said of...

Animal rescuers were summoned to a Thailand fence where a massive monitor lizard attempted to squeeze between metal bars and found itself stuck. A video recorded Monday in Chachoengsao shows the 5-foot lizard stuck around its middle between the metal bars of a fence that it apparently attempted to pass through while hunting near its pond. The Chachoengsao Rescue Team was summoned to the scene and the video shows them using hydraulic pliers to separate the bars and free the chubby lizard. The monitor, apparently uninjured, runs quickly into its pond after being freed. The rescuers said they plan to...

While the concept of men battling 16–foot prehistoric lizards sounds like something out of a 50’s sci-fi flick, a new discovery in Australia has revealed that such encounters may have occurred. According to a study appearing in Quaternary Science Reviews, researchers from the University of Queensland have found a tiny fossil that belonged to a giant lizard bone 50,000 years ago, indicating that gigantic reptiles and humans once co–existed.

Wildlife officials armed with shotguns will be increasing patrols of Palm Beach County canals from once a month to four to six times a month to try to hunt the reptiles down, according to the Sun Sentinel. The plan is to catch or shoot the lizards on sight — they've got 20 in Palm Beach since July.

Homestead Air Reserve Base near Miami, Florida, is dealing with a different sort of small ground invasion: the Nile monitor lizard. These invasive reptiles—possibly former family pets or escapees from nearby breeding facilities—occasionally lumber onto the base's tarmac to soak up the sun's rays. "When you have an airplane coming in to land or take off, and you have a 6-foot [1.8-meter] reptile laying on the runway, it causes a substantial human health and safety problem," said Parker Hall, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services. Agency employees patrol the runways on a regular basis to...

Large Lizard Spotted In Tree Is One Of Several Terrorizing Neighborhood   POSTED: 6:47 am EDT October 9, 2007 UPDATED: 1:01 pm EDT October 9, 2007  EDGEWOOD, Fla. -- A large lizard capable of eating small pets and injuring children spotted in a Central Florida neighborhood tree remains on the loose, keeping homeowners on edge.   PHOTOS: Lizard Hiding In Tree   The lizard, believed to be longer than 4 feet, was spotted Monday apparently trying to get to a nest in a tree near several Edgewood homes.     Neighbors said it is one of at least three...

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...

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - A woman in central Thailand held a funeral for a monitor lizard believed to have been the reincarnation of her 12-year-old son, who died in a road accident nearly two years ago, a report said Monday. Jamlong Taengnian, 53, and her relatives gathered at the family's house on the outskirts of Bangkok for the ceremony following the death of the reptile Saturday afternoon, The Nation newspaper reported. A photo of Jamlong's deceased son, Charoen, was placed beside the reptile's lifeless body. "I am so sad. I feel as if I have lost my son a second...