AUBURN – Water-quality officials figured they’d have the best shot of catching an out-of-place iguana on the loose near Lake Auburn once the weather cooled down.

“We were hoping to catch it and get it out before something happened,” said Mary Jane Dillingham, water quality manager for the Lewiston-Auburn Water District.

Her staff had been looking for the creature, rumored to darting along roads on the west and north sides of Lake Auburn, for the past two weeks.

Their search ended Wednesday on Lake Shore Drive, just feet from Arthur Auger’s mailbox. A driver spied the dead body of the 3-foot-long iguana on the side of the road and pulled over to inspect. Auger said the man knocked on his door at about 9:30 a.m. to let him know it was there.

“I don’t know how he saw it,” Auger said. “He had to have pretty sharp eyes, or else he was looking around for the beast.”

Auger said he’s read all the stories about the mystery animal found in the Turner woods earlier this month and suspected this might be a similar situation. But there was no mystery about the dead reptile next to his property.

“Apparently, it was the victim of a car,” Auger said. “That’s all I know. I don’t know a thing about iguanas.”

Dillingham said she began hearing reports of the animal two weeks ago, about two miles away on the west side of Lake Auburn. It was first spied along Whitman Spring Road, and Dillingham and her staff began actively looking for the creature.

“But they are pretty small and pretty fast, and it’s a labor-intensive job to find them,” Dillingham said.

The animal was spotted again Tuesday on Lake Shore Drive near Townsend Brook. Dillingham said she had contacted a reptile expert for advice on the best way to trap it.

“We were excited about catching it before it had a fatal ending, from the weather or a car,” she said.

Iguanas are tropical creatures, native to Central and South America, not chilly Maine. They require warmer temperatures, between 85 and 90 degrees, to stay healthy. It might have lasted for some time this summer, but cool fall and winter temperatures would have finished it.

“But it moved fast, and our expert said it was probably looking for an ideal spot,” she said. “It would have been looking for a long time in Maine.”

She suspects the reptile was someone’s pet that got loose or was let go. Iguanas are illegal to keep as pets in Maine, according to state law.

“They were banned when people did stupid things with them, like letting them go,” said Ryan Fairbrother, manager of Family Pet Center in Auburn. She guessed the animal, at about 3 feet long, would have been between 3 to 4 years old. Iguanas can grow to about 5 feet long, from nose to tail.

“That may be the biggest problem. They get big, and people don’t know what to do with them,” Fairbrother said.

Dillingham said she’d have someone from her staff stop by Auger’s property Wednesday to remove the animal.

“I don’t think anybody else will be interested in it now,” she said.