It may not be the Loch Ness Monster, but Toronto’s High Park had its own little mysterious reptile living in one of its ponds, until it was caught on Monday evening.

Members of the police marine unit, and staff from Reptilia, a reptile zoo in Vaughan, captured the spectacled caiman, a relative of the alligator, in Catfish Pond, on the west side of High Park.

The crew was called in by city of Toronto animal control to help with the search after a local resident posted a video of the creature on YouTube.

Lee Parker, facility manager of Reptilia, managed to wrangle the creature with his bare hands after about an hour of searching that drew a crowd of fascinated neighbours.

Parker waded waist-deep into the murky pond water to find the reptile. “I just snuck up behind him where I expected his body to be and just grabbed him,” he says, adding that the reptile, native to Central and South America, appears to be about a year old.

Parker says the reptile, which was “calling out for his mom and panicking,” is probably a pet that got too big and was dumped by his owner.

According to Parker, the reptile has a diet of mostly fish and frogs, but has “pretty powerful jaws and razor sharp teeth.”

The creature will stay with Reptilia until they can find him a more permanent home.

Teghan Stadnyk has lived near the park all her life. Her yard backs onto Catfish Pond, and she’s used to seeing all sorts of wildlife there. But nothing like what she says she saw this past weekend.

“I was with my friends and we saw a like a little crocodile kind of sitting and hovering there,” she says.

“It was pretty crazy and it actually flipped around a bit.”

Stadnyk says she took a video of the creature, about the size of “an adult’s arm,” swimming around the greenish brown waters of the pond, and posted it to Facebook.

Her brother Kyle Stadnyk, who lives in British Columbia, saw the video on her account and posted the video to YouTube under the title “Caiman in Toronto Pond.”

Kyle Stadnyk, who contacted animal control, says he guessed that it was a caiman, based on its size and Discovery Channel videos he’s seen.

“At first I was worried about my sister’s dogs because they love to swim. I assumed it must be someone’s pet and that the owner got tired of it and decided to release it into the pond,” he recalls.

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Fiona Venedam, a supervisor with animal services, says they’ve never heard of anything like a caiman in the pond. She says people are not allowed to have caimans as pets in the city of Toronto, as they are a “prohibited species.”

She urged anyone with such a pet to come forward instead of just dumping it into a pond or allowing it to escape.