Gecko butt-dials ‘bazillion’ times from Hawaii seal hospital
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A gecko on a phone at the Marine Mammal Center in Kailua-Kona on Oct. 3. The gecko was the culprit in making numerous calls in the phones’ recent call history with its tiny feet.
If you got incessant phone calls last week from a hospital that cares for Hawaiian monk seals, you were butt-dialed.
Or, more specifically, foot-dialed.
By a gecko.
Marine mammal veterinarian Claire Simeone was at lunch when she got a call from Ke Kai Ola, the Big Island hospital where she’s director. There was silence on the other end. Nine more silent calls followed. Fearing a seal emergency, she rushed back.
She wasn’t the only one getting calls, and people started asking why the hospital was calling non-stop.
Trying figure out why a “bazillion” calls were made from one line, she called the phone company and a rep tried to talk her through finding a possible line on the fritz. She walked into a lab and found the culprit. The gecko was perched on a phone, making calls to everyone in the recent call history with “HIS TINY GECKO FEET,” she wrote in a Twitter thread the next day, detailing the saga.
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Social media delighted in the tale and some people offered jokes about a certain company’s gecko calling to save you money on your car insurance.
After discovering the mystery caller, Simeone caught the gecko and put it outside on a plant, she said today.
“If there’s a little gecko that helps us share the story of conservation, then that’s a win,” she said of the work she does caring for the endangered seals. “I think people needed a little pick me up with the news cycle.”
