'What is going on!'
Beverly Hills has it all: amazing shopping, yummy chow, celebs aplenty, and, oh, jaywalking lizards.
Celebrities were freaking out over the weekend to see this critter taking a leisurely stroll around their posh 90210 neighborhood.
Sharon Stone, who was clearly alarmed, shared video of it wandering around her ’hood.
This is walking up my street!!!! What is going on!!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/w9eT8pyYWQ
— Sharon Stone (@sharonstone) June 4, 2018
Jessica Alba, who moved into the neighborhood last year, shared footage of the “jaywalking” reptile after it was captured. The animal control officer can be heard in the background asking an onlooker, “Is this yours, sir?”
Alba and Stone both speculated that it was a Komodo dragon — aka the “king of the lizards,” one of the largest types in the world, with a venomous bite.
While it would be really out of place because their native habitat is the savanna grasslands in Indonesia — not the City of Angels — we were inclined to believe Stone.
After all, her then-husband Phil Bronstein was attacked by one at the Los Angeles Zoo in 2001. He was on a private tour of the zoo (a gift from Stone) and was in the Indonesian lizard’s cage when the reptile mistook his foot for a white rat — a typical dinner — and attacked.
However, we reached out to some experts who said not to believe the venomous hype.
San Diego Zoo ambassador Rick Schwartz told Yahoo Entertainment, “Given the size and location, this is most likely someone’s pet water monitor. They are in the same lizard family as the Komodo dragon.”
And National Geographic Channel reptile expert Brady Barr agreed.
“Definitely not a Komodo dragon,” he told us. “Looks like a water monitor to me. Monitor lizards are quite common in pet trade.”
He later narrowed it down to a “Nile monitor” and said that folks had nothing to worry about. “No big deal.”
The Beverly Hills Police Department shared on Monday that the monitor lizard, who is named Stephan, was later reunited with his owner after “escaping.”
Earlier this year, Stone showed off her home in Architectural Digest and revealed that the reason she moved to the neighborhood in the 1990s was that her home is gated and super-secure, something she needed after a series of “crazy stalkers” started to bother her after Basic Instinct.
This creature takes that to a whole other level!
