PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Authorities responded to a strange situation on a Phoenix freeway Wednesday morning.
Around 6:45 a.m., a large lizard could be seen on the side of the Loop 101 at Cave Creek Road. Arizona Department of Public Safety said the animal is a monitor lizard.
Troopers attempted to safely wrangle the reptile around 7 a.m., but it was able to escape through a storm drain in the road.
Reptile experts from the Phoenix Herpetological Society were called to the scene and after some time, they were able to pull the lizard from the drain and safely capture it.
Watch the daring rescue below:
“We rescue reptiles every single day, but on the 101, a Nile monitor walking down the 101, that’s a first one for me,” said Alex Roszkowski with the Herpetological Society.
Roszkowski said he and fellow reptile wrangler Casey Brose had to also fight against the elements while the lizard battled back.
“We were both starting to get a little hot, and he was getting worn out, the lizard, so we were trying to make sure that we could get him before he cooked in that little hole,” he said.
Brose said though performing the rescue was as intense as it looked on camera, he tried to rescue the fighting animal as soon as possible to get it inside a vehicle to cool down.
“At that point, it’s ‘you gotta go.’ Commit or get bit is what we say at the sanctuary,” he said. “I grabbed that animal by the tail at the most un-bitey end. And it was essentially getting him from not biting me.”
Brose said the sanctuary has Nile monitors, so he was very familiar with this animal and how to safely wrangle it.
Thankfully, the lizard was happily reunited with its owner thanks to the help of the Phoenix Herpetological Society.
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