MINNEAPOLIS _ There's a big Asian water monitor lizard crawling around somewhere in suburban Champlin, and its owner is hoping to get the reptile back.
Champlin police on Tuesday put out an all-points bulletin on Facebook in hopes of generating leads and tracking down the 3-foot-long creature.
"It's good at climbing stuff, and it may become aggressive if backed into a corner," the department wrote in the Facebook posting. "A brief Wikipedia search has informed us that it mostly likes to eat rodents and crocodile eggs (it's obviously not from around here), so as long as you don't have those things, you should be good."
The lizard belongs to a Champlin man who said it crawled away from his house.
A photo accompanying the post, which has been shared more than 1,400 times, reads "this is not the one that's lost, but if you see this in your yard, it's probably the one."
Police Chief Ty Schmidt said the lizard had been on the lam for about a week before the owner reported that it escaped from a house about 10:25 p.m. Monday. The news, he said, has created quite a bit of buzz in the northern Minneapolis suburb.
"A few people were freaked out at first," Schmidt said, but added that it's not a danger to people or pets. "Generally people have been pretty entertained by it."
As of Wednesday afternoon, the lizard had not been found.
"It's been pretty cold at night and it probably doesn't do really well in cold weather," he said.
