FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – For residents living in the Poinsettia Heights neighborhood of Fort Lauderdale, it's not odd to see iguanas crawling along the water's edge of the man-made lake.
"We do have a lot of iguanas on the lake that we live on," said Marian Lindquist, who is used to the scaly critters that typically sun bathe and swim in the lake.
But Lindquist and her daughter, Lily Lindquist, have taken a different view of iguanas.
After using the bathroom Sunday, Lily Lindquist noticed it wouldn't flush and the water would back up.
"I tried to flush it again and nothing would happen," she said.
Her mother tried to help and even tried to buy a special kind of plunger, but the problem persisted.
"I got the plunger. I tried to plunge it. It wouldn't plunge," Marian Lindquist said.
So they called a plumber.
"I've never seen anything like this before," said Alisa Scott, a plumber at Roto-Rooter for 12 years. "This is the first time I pulled something like that out of a toilet."
Using her tools, Scott snagged onto something that was blocking the toilet.
"To my surprise, I pulled out that large iguana," Scott said. "At first I thought it was a toy, and then it started moving around."
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Lily Lindquist said she didn't even want to look "because I didn't want to see an iguana in the toilet that I just tried to use."
Scott thinks the lizard probably came down a main roof vent, got stuck and looked for the biggest opening, which is the toilet.
"I don't want to be there when an iguana flies out of the toilet or an iguana bites me when I'm trying to go to the bathroom," Lily Lindquist said.
Since the incident, Lily Lindquist has made it a priority to close off the rooftop vents.
To the dismay of all those involved, the iguana did not make it.
"We didn't want the iguana to die," Marian Lindquist said. "We did not know the iguana was there."
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