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Pinellas iguana rescued by Hernando couple

Staff photo by Yolanda Fernandez

Last week Sheila and Michael Brewer of Brooksville came across this 4-foot iguana sunning itself outside a medical building in Pinellas Park. The Brewers decided to take the reptile in.

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By STEPHEN THOMPSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 20, 2009

Updated: 10/20/2009 05:09 pm

BROOKSVILLE - Sheila and Michael Brewer are accustomed to rescuing cats, dogs and unwanted farm animals – but not a reptile so big they don't have a dog crate large enough for it.

But that's what happened last Thursday when they came across a 4-foot iguana sunning itself outside a medical building in Pinellas Park. The Brewers were in Pinellas checking out possible foster homes for their rescued animals.

No agency wanted to deal with the iguana, said Sheila, 50, and she counts among them the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the local chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Pinellas County's animal control division.

So the Brewers decided to take the reptile in, at their property in Brooksville. They tried folding the animal into a crate where a malamute used to live, but it wasn't big enough. As a result, the iguana has its own 10-by-12-foot room, Sheila Brewer said.

"You have to be a reptile person to have one this size," she said.

"I think she's tame enough to have been somebody's pet," Michael Brewer said.

The couple has taken out a classified ad in The Tampa Tribune trying to find the iguana's owner.

"What I'd like to do is find her original owner and find out if she got out and why," Sheila Brewer said.

Reporter Stephen Thompson can be reached at (727) 451-2336. Reporter Yolanda Fernandez contributed to this report.

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