A green lizard traveled from America to England inside a suitcase (Representational image)
A holidaymaker returns home from sunny Florida in the US to the cold north-east of England with a small unsuspecting guest in her suitcase. She didn’t know about it while opening her luggage until her mother saw her and shouted, “There’s a lizard on my bedroom door.” The green anole lizard, a harmless tree-dweller native to the Americas, had traveled 7,250 kilometers without realizing how different the climate would be. The reptile has been taken over by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), a charity in England.
Holidaymaker Rachel Bond visited Orlando in Florida and returned to her home in Whitley Bay this week. Ms Bond, 54, initially thought her 84-year-old mother was seeing things when she saw the reptile roaming the floor, said one report in daily mail,
“I wasn’t sure if it was her age that caught her, but when I went upstairs she was adamant that she had seen the reptile go into her room. We looked around well and then we found her on her bed Found under the pillow,” Ms Bond said.
according to a bbc report, Ms Bond said she thought her mother was very relieved that she didn’t wake up at night with a lizard on her face. “It’s quite remarkable that the lizard managed to travel all the way without any damage,” she said, adding that she also felt “sorry” for the lizard. “After enjoying such nice warm weather, he ended up in Whitley Bay in the winter.”
The RSPCA said it was unlikely the charity would return the stowaway lizard to its country of origin and therefore rehabilitate it in a wildlife park or zoo in England. RSPCA Inspector Lucy Green felt that the lizard was “very lucky”, that it survived “such an incredible journey”.
According to Nature Journal, the anole is native to the Caribbean islands, and one species can be found in the Americas, “from Florida and Texas to North Carolina”.
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