OCALA, Fla. — As the search continues by wildlife officials for a cobra that escaped form a man’s Ocala home, the lingering possibility remains that the man’s monitor lizard ate the snake.
Brian Purdy owns a 4-foot-long black monitor lizard, which may have eaten the cobra.
“They are strong animals. They count on their strength,” said reptile expert Dino Ferri, who is the director of Central Florida Zoo.
[ READ: Search for escaped cobra continues in Ocala ]
The zoo has a resident savannah monitor lizard named Chili.
Ferri said the lizards will eat rodents, birds’ eggs, and pretty much anything in sight.
“They are really opportunistic, but venomous snakes are definitely something they can handle, and they are immune to the venom,” said Ferri.
If bitten by a venomous snake, the lizards may get a bad blister.
[ READ: What it takes to own a venomous reptile in Florida ]
As for whether Purdy’s monitor could have eaten the snake, he said they are not the neatest of eaters.
“They will thrash, they will smash, they will bang it, they bust it up a lot,” said Ferri. “It’s a 2-foot snake. It’s a decent size, but it’s not like a human slurping a piece of pasta. It’s going to take some work to get it down, so there would definitely be some signs of struggle.”
Ferri isn’t a veterinarian, but believes it would be obvious if the snake was in the monitor’s stomach.
[ READ: 9 Facts about the Monocled Cobra ]
“It seems like you would see vertebrae. That’s two feet of vertebrae in this little area, it seems like it would show up at some point,” said Ferri.
He said it would take several days for the monitor to digest the snake.
In the meantime, area residents were concerned that the snake remained on the lam.
"It's still very scary," neighbor Brandon Lacey said. "And just a lot of people praying for us that nobody gets hurt in the neighborhood. And it is a real life-threatening thing."