Florida man finds massive, hissing iguana sitting in his toilet: "It turned around and opened its mouth"
One man in South Florida got to experience what seemed like a real-life version of "Jurassic Park" – in his bathroom.
John Riddle was hanging out at his Hollywood, Florida, home on Friday when he realized that the door connecting his pool deck to the bathroom was ajar. That's when he went inside the bathroom and came across an unexpected and shocking visitor – a massive, scaley iguana taking over his porcelain throne.
"That's when it turned around and opened its mouth," he said. "And that's all I needed to see to, like, back off for a minute and figure out what was going on."
The hissing iguana stayed in the toilet for about an hour more, at one point trying to climb through the pipes within, leaving its tail sticking out. Eventually, it climbed out and made a pit stop in Riddle's pool before running away through the backyard.
Iguanas have been causing chaos in Florida for years. While green iguanas are the ones most commonly thought of, particularly in the winter when cold temperatures can cause them to freeze and fall out of trees, the one that infiltrated Riddle's home appeared to be a Mexican spiny-tailed iguana. This iguana species, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, was first observed in the state in the 1960s, and was introduced to the region through the pet trade.
The animal bears a striking resemblance to another invasive iguana species in the state, black spiny-tailed iguanas, which are known to be a threat to the state's burrowing owls. These iguanas, FWC says, will shelter and nest in the owls' burrows, a problem so pervasive that the FWC has a program in place to trap and remove them from areas where owls are located.