Woman finds iguana in toilet of her Palmetto home

PALMETTO (FOX 13) - It's a good thing she didn't sit down.

Monday around 5 p.m., Palmetto homeowner Dani Craven began cleaning her master bathroom but she didn't expect what she found in her toilet bowl. 

"I sprayed the whole top of the toilet. I lifted the seat, and I saw this tail curved around the bowl," she said.

Craven posted on Facebook that she needed help with her house guest - an iguana was relaxing in the shallow toilet water. Craven's friend, Shannon Walker offered to help.

"She sent me a message and said, 'I will come get your baby lizard," Craven said.

And, as if she had done this before, Walker had a plan.

"I told her, 'Get some gardening gloves, get a cooler, get a net, be ready for when I get there,'" she told Craven.

She was armed, but not ready. After some screaming and trash-talk with the iguana, Walker's plan worked.

"I was shaking," she remembers. "I couldn't believe I did it."

The iguana is now in the hands of wildlife conservationist Justin Matthews.

He named the foot-long, five-ounce, four-month-old boy Flushie.

Named for the fate he escaped, Flushie is going to become a part of Matthews' educational exhibits for schoolchildren and those otherwise curious.

"I have been rescuing iguanas over 30 years. I have never seen an iguana in a toilet," said Matthews. "If they would have flushed that toilet, he would have just kept going underwater."

It was the best possible outcome for Flushie, considering the fear they were all probably in.

"The fact that no iguanas were hurt in this production, everybody was safe, he has a good home, he is going to be used for education, all is well," said Walker.

How did Flushie get into the plumbing?

Matthews believes he was discarded by a previous owner, lived in the wild for a while, and then got to the toilet by going up through the sewer system.