Pretoria - If we kill or sell living creatures, we will have nothing to show our children and grandchildren.
This was the philosophical response of Pretoria resident Cornelia Mclean, 73, who found an indigenous water monitor lizard swimming in the pool of her Villieria home this week.
McClean said she was indoors when she heard electricians who had come to check her fuse box screaming about a snake.
“Our domestic helper went outside to check what was the matter. Then she came back into the house and refused to go back out. When I made my way outside I found the big lizard in the swimming pool, a rope tied tightly around its neck.”
She called her youngest daughter and asked her to call anyone she could think of who could safely remove the animal without harming it. While the SPCA could not come immediately, a friend of her daughter who saw a post which had been put up on Facebook, came to their aid.
“He called us and told us to keep the monitor in the pool as it would be easier to catch it there and hopefully avoid us getting into contact with it as it has very long sharp claws,” she said.
She said once the reptile had been captured using a pool net, they took it to the National Zoological Gardens in Pretoria.
“I really hope it will be all right. I don’t understand what gives us the right to harm an animal that wouldn’t bother anyone,” Mclean said regarding the fact that its neck had been tied up and hurt.
“The lizard is just as scared of us as we are of it and to tie it up like that is just not fair,” said Mclean.
A zoo spokesperson confirmed that they had the monitor in their care, and said it weighed abut 4.5kg and was 1.5m long.
The rope seemed to have been around its neck for some time and it had caused a great deal of scarring.
The monitor was taken into the zoo’s animal hospital for treatment and is currently at the zoo’s reptile park quarantine facility.
In a statement the zoo said water or Nile monitor lizards frequented streams and rivers in the Pretoria area, but were not recommended as pets as they had a temperamental nature. They are a threat to chickens, pigeons and other small birds.
It is illegal to keep indigenous animals such as this as a pet, although the rope would suggest that is what happened to this monitor.
The zoo will release the lizard once it has fully recovered.
The water monitor lizard rescued from a home in Villieria.
Pretoria News