PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — One Florida driver "did a double take" when she realized the massive reptile she saw on the side of the road wasn't an alligator.
Renee Aland was driving with her daughter, Zoey Marzonie, along Hillsborough Boulevard in Port Charlotte, just outside of Sarasota County, when they saw it — a 5-foot lizard "strutting" across the sidewalk.
"I looked over and saw what I thought, at first, was a gator," Aland told 10 Tampa Bay. "As I went past, I noticed that its tongue came out."
The long, thin tongue belonged to what is presumably an Asian water monitor, an invasive species in Florida. As the name suggests, these semi-aquatic reptiles are native to Southern Asia, from Bengal to the Philippines, according to researchers at SeaWorld.
“Did I just really see what I think I just saw?” Aland remembers thinking. Her curiosity led her to turn her car around to see if she could spot it creeping through the grass again.
"Sure enough, it came back out of the woods, probably about 10-15 feet in front of me," she said.
That's when Aland called the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and took the now-viral video of the lizard walking across the sidewalk.
While Aland says the Asian water monitor was "crazy cool to see," she and her daughter are concerned about the harm it could do to Florida's native species.
"We know the dangers that it can cause," Marzonie said. "It’s a really big deal to us to protect our natural Florida wildlife...It’s really important to protect the natural beauty of the state that we have."
Marzonie said she hopes the animal can be rehomed or put in a zoo, where it can be used to educate people about the dangers of invasive species in Florida.
"It should be more known here in Florida about the dangers of putting out these invasive animals and just letting them loose," she said.
FWC called monitor lizards a "high priority species" for its nonnative fish and wildlife program.
"Our biologists are still gathering information related to sightings of this animal to determine potential response efforts and will continue monitoring," the agency said.
Anyone who sees an Asian water monitor out in the wild is asked to call the Invasive Species Hotline at 888-IVE-GOT1 (888-483-4681.)