Iguana Creates Monster Toilet Clog

When a South Florida woman had a toilet clog that just wouldn’t budge over the weekend, she did what most homeowners would do and picked up the phone to call in a plumber.

Roto Rooter’s Alisa Scott happily obliged, heading out to the Fort Lauderdale home on a Sunday to help a customer in a jam. What Scott found in the toilet, however, tops anything she’s seen in her 12 years in the business, she told WSVN.

“You don’t see this every day, for sure,” the professional plumber told the station.

It seems a rather large iguana had managed to get inside the toilet, causing a clog that just wouldn’t budge. Not knowing the clog was animal-related, Scott hooked it with an auger when attempts to plunge didn’t pan out.

The resulting scream alerted homeowner Marian Lindquist to the situation.

When all was said and done, Scott managed to pull the foot-and-a-half critter out of the toilet. Unfortunately for the iguana, the encounter with the auger led to its demise.

Lindquist isn’t sure where the iguana came from, but it’s been tossed around that the critter came in through the roof.

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While toilet-clogging iguanas aren’t exactly typical, encounters with these lizards are fairly commonplace in South Florida, the University of Florida reports. It seems that thanks to the exotic pet trade, many of these creatures have managed to escape – or be released – from their confines and now find themselves living in the wild.

“This has created unique problems for Florida’s homeowners and businesses,” the university’s website states. “South and Central Florida’s subtropical climate allows these large herbivorous lizards to survive, reproduce and become a part of the Florida environment.”

Warmer temperatures tend to increase the frequency of encounters with Florida’s cold-blooded residents, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission notes. Alligators, for example, are well known for taking strolls into neighborhoods this time of year.

“All reptiles are more active in the warmer months,” FWC’s Gary Morse told Patch. “That’s just the cold-blooded creatures’ (way). Their metabolism increases and they do become active.”

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