The Thing Is Out of Sight, Not Mind in Newport Beach

NEWPORT BEACH —  Best anyone can tell, the thing first slithered up under a neighbor’s house about 5 or so months ago.

It was still hot out, kind of tropical even, maybe even reminiscent of those lazy days in Thailand, as far as the thing was concerned.

But the dogs would go nuts every time they got wind of it, crazy with a mix of fear and proprietary outrage, and so their owner boarded up the crawl space under his Newport Beach home.

The thing went elsewhere.

Next thing you know, the thing showed up next door, where the lady of the house came upon it as it was sunning itself on her patio. It stared at her, then flicked its long forked tongue.

“It had a long tongue that darted in and out,” said Barbara Garber, the lady of that sleek, modern house in Balboa Coves. “It was a lizard-type creature, we guessed. In any case, it was not an alligator.”

Not Seen for a While

In any event, the case of the thing in Newport Beach has yet to be resolved. No one can say for certain just what it was, or is. It hasn’t been seen for a while, but memories remain crystal clear. And the removal of the baited traps last week has not put an end to residents’ vigilance. They continue to watch warily for the return of the thing.

By all accounts, it is big--maybe as long as 5 feet--and its long, pointy head is not very attractive. First the word was that it was a caiman, a Latin American cousin of the alligator, although the thing’s flicking tongue later cast doubt on that school of thought. That’s when the lizard theory, the large-lizard theory, took hold.

“When we saw it in the water, saw how it was acting, that’s when we came to the conclusion that it was not a caiman,” said Valerie Zanone, a Newport Beach animal control officer.

“It was the tongue, the legs, it was all part of a puzzle that I was piecing together. And then the more I read about lizards, and talked to people, we realized that it wasn’t an alligator. And when people hear the word alligator, they tend to panic.”

Not that all of the residents of Balboa Coves took consolation in the news that the thing was probably just a monitor lizard, perhaps a cute little nipper when somebody brought him home from an exotic-pet store, but which had grown a tad unwieldy for life in suburbia.

“These people were genuinely concerned about this thing lurking around their homes,” Newport Beach Police spokesman Robert Oakley said.

And it appears that some residents were not fond of the idea of perchance bumping into the thing while they were taking a swim in a cove otherwise cluttered with yachts and ducks.

“It was a few residents that swim in there that were mostly concerned,” said Garber, who is also a director of the Balboa Coves Community Assn. “They were concerned that the thing would be in there swimming around when they were. Everybody was concerned, and I suppose there might have been some reason for concern.”

Garber, herself, at first was rather amused, then rather annoyed with the thing.

“I would go out with a broom and chase it out,” she said.

That was before the Sheriff’s Department Harbor Patrol, cruising in the cove behind her house, got a look at the thing sunning on the Garber patio. Next thing she knew, Garber said, there was an official note on her door advising her of the regulations against keeping exotic pets. That was when things pertaining to the thing began to accelerate a bit.

Garber explained to the authorities about the thing, that it had found her and not vice versa. Then a community association flyer warned residents to be wary of it. A snapshot of the creature, taken while it was sunning on Garber’s patio, appeared on the flyer. It was described as a caiman and “a dangerous public nuisance.”

After that, depending on whom you talked to, the thing was into all sorts of things.

Piles of Feathers

Resident Ernest Stilcock, a 21-year Balboa Coves resident who says he is older than God but not quite as old as George Burns, took a visitor to his wooden patio to point out the exact spots on his back-yard beach where the piles of duck feathers had been found.

“There was no blood or anything,” Stilcock said. “But some of the neighbors say they heard these ducks screaming something terrible in the night. I’ve heard it sometimes myself and come out and looked, but I’ve never seen anything.”

Stilcock advanced the theory that the thing may have swallowed its victims whole, lizardlike, thereby accounting for the lack of blood-speckled sand.

“I’m sorry the thing hasn’t shown up recently,” he said. “You know, I used to spear fish right off here. If it had come up here, I was hoping to spear it, too.”

Another resident, this one reluctant to give his name in connection with anything so frivolous, roundly debunked the duck-eating theory when he pointed out the exact spot where he had seen the thing.

Everybody Happy

“There were ducks on the patio, so I came out to shoo them off,” the man said. “And there in the midst of the ducks sat Sir Lizard. I saw him sitting there with the ducks all around him. And he was happy, and the ducks were happy.”

But even this resident, who has actually seen the thing close up, said that he was not convinced that it was a lizard.

“We’ve been calling it a lizagator,” he said. “I always thought that lizards couldn’t swim.”

In the meantime, and unfortunately for many of Balboa Coves’ human inhabitants who are, frankly, fed up with the thing, the tale of the large, uninvited reptilian visitor has taken on rather mythic tones.

People still talk about the thing. People still laugh about the thing. And some people would even like to invite it back.

“I never did see the thing,” said one anonymous resident as he warmed himself by the fireplace of his living room the other day, much as the thing liked to do on his neighbor’s patio.

‘I’d Like to See It’

“But as far as I know, it wouldn’t run you out of your house or anything. . . . Actually, I wouldn’t mind running into it. I’d like to see it.”

But the thing, it appears, is not partial to modeling for strangers.

“He was very, very shy,” said Zanone, the animal control officer who was called in for what turned out to be several unsuccessful attempts to corral the big guy.

“He didn’t respond to us,” she said. “We were on the docks, looking down on him. He was kind of lethargic and enjoying the sun, and then he saw us and boom! he was gone.”

Seeing as how the rash of sightings appears to have tapered off, Zanone said that recently the animal-control people removed the large dog traps that they had baited with chicken and cat food in hopes of luring the creature inside.

The thing, which reportedly likes to eat small mammals, birds and crocodile eggs when given a choice, didn’t even nibble.

“He’s used to fresh fish, fresh bugs, that kind of thing,” Zanone said. “He is not going to want a dead chicken. We kind of figured that, but nobody knew what else to put in there.”

Maybe It’s Not Over

But all may not yet be over with the thing.

Although the creature has not been seen around Balboa Coves for a while, that does not mean that it has taken leave of the neighborhood for good.

UC Irvine biologist Albert Bennett, who has studied lizards for more than 20 years, noted that if the thing was, in fact, a monitor, it was probably quite happy in Balboa Coves if there was a handy food supply and if there were safe places to snuggle in for the night.

And Bennett had nothing but respect for the monitor’s ability to adapt to whatever.

“Unlike other lizards, they are very intelligent,” he said of the monitors, which are native to the tropical climes of Asia, Africa and Australia. “They are very curious animals, very explorative. . . . They regulate their body temperature, and they are quite good at that. Like right now, it could be just holed up, waiting for some more warm weather, before he comes out.

“Or he may have wandered up in the hills, in between Laguna and Newport, and it could be a year before it comes out.”