Hello? Gecko?

Veterinarian and seal expert Claire Simeone was just about to settle down and enjoy her lunch when her cellphone rang.

Work was calling, and as director of the Marine Mammal Center’s Ke Kai Ola Hawaiian Monk Seal Hospital in KailuaKona, Hawaii, Simeone picked up immediately.

“As a veterinarian, I’m really on call for any type of questions or emergencies that come through,” she told The Washington Post, noting that the hospital is administering care to four endangered Hawaiian monk seals.

But when Simeone answered her phone Wednesday, she was greeted not by a member of her staff calling with an urgent sealrelated question. Instead, she was met with complete silence.

In the span of 15 minutes, Simeone’s phone rang nine times, each call identical — all from the same number, and all eerily silent.

“The first thing I thought was that there was some kind of an emergency because I started getting call after call in really rapid succession,” she said.

There was no seal emergency at the hospital. Just a tiny emerald green gecko with dexterous feet and access to a landline phone with a touch screen.

In a nowviral Twitter thread, Simeone detailed Friday her hunt for the source of the mysterious calls, delighting thousands with what has been described as “100% the most ‘Hawaii’ story.”

After receiving the barrage of bizarre calls, fearing something had happened to one of the seals, Simeone tweeted, she abandoned her lunch plans and raced back to the hospital as quickly as she could.

“More calls,” she tweeted minutes later. “NINE calls in 15 minutes. I start to panic a bit, and drive back to the hospital. Seal emergency? I am on it.”

Arriving at the center and expecting to see staff members in a frenzy, Simeone told The Post, she found everyone outside on the patio eating their lunches, completely calm.

“I was like, ‘Guys, what’s up? What’s wrong?’ ” she said, telling her staff she had just gotten a handful of calls from them. “They said, ‘Well, nobody’s inside.’ ”

Then, Simeone said, her phone rang again. The call was definitely coming from inside the hospital.

“Everybody was really confused about what could have been going on,” she said.

A company representative confirmed that “a bazillion calls” were coming from one line inside the hospital. Thus began Simeone’s hunt for what she believed to be a glitchy phone.

Was it the main office line? Nope. Nor was it the phone in her personal office or the hospital’s “fish kitchen.”

“Meanwhile I’m receiving calls this whole time,” Simeone said.

Finally, Simeone entered the hospital’s laboratory, and there it was — the phone responsible for all the calls.

Only upon closer examination of the phone did she discover the true culprit:

“THERE IS A GECKO SITTING ON THE TOUCHSCREEN OF THE PHONE, MAKING CALLS WITH HIS TINY GECKO FEET!!!” she tweeted. “This gecko has called me 15 times, and everyone in our recent call list.” She posted a picture of the gecko on her phone, captioning it “*Actual photo of telemarketer*”

Caught redhanded — greenfooted? — in the middle of a call, the mischievous critter scampered away, turning on the landline’s speakerphone in the process, Simeone said.