GRIMSBY TELEGRAPH (UK) 18 November 06 Travelling Reptile Is A Long Way From Home
What the gecko is that?
This 15cm reptile has been living in a box inside a hangar near Humberside Airport for several weeks.And the discovery of the scaly intruder at the helicopter plant was enough to make grown men scream.
Al Darwin (43), engineering shift supervisor at the CHC Scotia helicopter company, described the moment when the gecko was first spotted.
He said: "I had gone to move a large crate with spares in it with one of the lads.
"He had hold of one end and I had hold of the other.
"The next thing we saw was this creature running from my end of the box to the other end, at which point the lad screamed and dropped the box."
It ran away, but after a chase, Mr Darwin managed to trap it in a box.
The gecko, which hails from the Mediterranean and the north coast of Africa, was fed a feast of chopped up pork pie as the group of men debated what to do with it.
Mr Darwin took it home, and from his son's stack of lizard and reptile books, he was able to identify it as a Moorish gecko.
But mystery surrounds its survival and how long it had been in the hangar.
Mr Darwin said: "We get deliveries from all over the world all the time.
"We definitely didn't order it and it didn't come with the normal paperwork but it certainly caused some amusement!"
It is now being looked after by the RSPCA.
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