A Spanish tourist, residing in Badajoz, was in for a surprise when she arrived home last Monday and opened her suitcase after a holiday in Madeira. In her luggage, she brought an unwanted ‘gift’: a gecko, about 30 centimetres long. As it is not common in that region of Spain, the alarmed woman called the emergency line of the Rexcate wildlife centre. The story was reported yesterday by the newspaper La Crónica de Badajoz.

Biologist Gonzalo Albarrán, director of the Rexcate centre, explained that the first thing the technicians asked the woman was a photograph of the small reptile (see image accompanying this news). They soon realized that it was a gecko, a species endemic to Madeira, and informed the tourist that it did not pose any danger.

Even so, the wildlife experts offered to go to the lady’s house to collect the specimen. However, when they arrived at the scene, the gecko had already died, apparently due to the stress of the trip and being outside its natural habitat.

According to the news, if the small reptile had survived, the technicians would have to contact the Regional Government of Extremadura and coordinate with a Portuguese native fauna centre a transfer process, to place the animal in a reintroduction program in the wild. A lot of hassle was avoided, but the scare remained.