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Florida woman finds iguana swimming in toilet

By Ben Hooper
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Nov. 22 (UPI) -- A Florida woman with a fear of lizards came face to face with her phobia when she looked into her toilet and discovered a spiny tail iguana.

Dani Craven said she was cleaning her toilet Monday evening when she encountered the lizard.

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"I didn't know what it was at first, so I instantly screamed and my 9-year-old daughter come running in and she said, 'Mommy what is it?' and I said, 'I don't know,'" Craven told WFLA-TV. "All I could see were scaly, like a scaly tail. I couldn't tell if it was an alligator or a lizard. I didn't know."

Craven, who slammed the toilet shut and piled bricks on top of it to prevent the reptile from escaping, said she has a phobia of lizards.

"I hate them. I am so terrified of them. I had a lizard jump on my face when I was five. So when people say 'Oh its just a lizard,' No! Its my worst fear. So that's why I freaked out the way I did and I wasn't gonna go near it," she said.

Craven contacted friend Shannon Walker, who came over to help get rid of the reptile.

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Craven posted video to Facebook of Walker catching the lizard in a net.

"I'm such an animal lover that I was like, 'I can do this. I got it, don't worry about it.' I'm like thinking to myself, 'it's just a lizard,'" Walker said.

Walker said she was taken aback, however, when she saw the size of the iguana.

"It was much bigger than I thought," Walker told WFTS-TV.

The iguana was turned over to Justin Matthews with Matthews Wildlife Rescue, who said the spiny tail iguana is native to Mexico. He said the lizard was likely an escaped or abandoned pet.

Matthews said the iguana may have been flushed down a toilet and made its way through the sewer to Craven's commode.

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