SIDELINES...

FAR FROM HOME

A giant iguana more than 5ft (1.5m) long was spotted by a member of the public in a layby on the A72 near Broughton in the Scottish Borders on 12 September, and was being cared for in Lanarkshire by the Scottish SPCA, who named him Iggy. “Despite having a few bumps, he was alright once he had been warmed up,” said an animal rescue officer. BBC News, 15 Sept; D.Mirror, 16 Sept 2017.

WOLVES RETURN

Rome’s symbol is a she-wolf sucking the infant brothers Romulus and Remus, and now wolves have been spotted outside the city for the first time in more than a century. Hidden cameras captured a pair of mature wolf cubs drinking from a water hole in the Castel di Guido nature reserve near Leonardo da Vinci airport. D.Telegraph, 26 Sept 2017.

LONG TIME NO SEE

A 76-year-old German was reunited with his car 20 years after he forgot where he had parked. He reported his car missing to the police in Frankfurt in 1997. It was parked in a garage in an old industrial building, and was discovered because the building was due to be demolished. The police drove the owner to the car, but it was in a sorry state and could not be driven away. irishtimes.com, 17 Nov 2017.

QUITE HARMLESS

A walker called police after spotting snakes lounging on a tarpaulin covering motor boats on the Thames in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, and, having searched for their markings online, believing them to be deadly. When the police arrived, they found the snakes were made of rubber. D.Telegraph, 23 Aug 2017.

CARING EAGLES

Alex Keivers, a wildlife watcher on the Isle of Mull, was astonished to find a pair of white-tailed eagles incubating a ground nest of goose eggs. The eagles had been monitored for 15 years and had never been known to lay a single egg. Such fostering by eagles has never been observed before. BBC Wildlife, July 2017.