Trappers captured an exotic 61/2-foot lizard that had been terrorizing a neighborhood by lunching on ducklings and sunbathing on docks around a lake.

"We'd been getting calls saying that there was a Loch Ness monster up there," said exotic-wildlife trapper Todd Hardwick. "They had noticed that all the baby ducklings had vanished from the lake, and it was climbing out on their docks and sunbathing and panicking everyone."So a resident on the manmade lake in this Hollywood suburb hired Hardwick, owner of Pesky Critters trapping company, whose previous exploits included wrestling a 22-foot-long python from beneath a house in Fort Lauderdale.

On Tuesday Hardwick set a trap filled with raw chicken necks.

"He loves meat and came right out," he said.

The creature was a water monitor lizard, an endangered reptile usually found in Southeast Asia.

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"It's like the Komodo dragon," said herpetologist Joe Wasilewski, owner of Natural Selections in Miami. He will try to breed the lizard.

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