The prank caller had sticky feet
Curious gecko sends missives from phone pad
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 Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, Simeone picked up immediately.
But when Simeone answered, she was greeted not by a member of her staff calling with an urgent seal-related question. Instead, she was met with complete silence. No breathing, not even a crackle of static.
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 now-viral Twitter thread, Simeone detailed her hunt for the source of the mysterious calls, delighting thousands with what has been described as “100% the most ‘Hawaii’ story.”
“You are not going to BELIEVE this story, Dr. Simeone tweeted last Friday. “It’s one of the best things I’ve experienced this year. Hold on tight for this roller-coaster.”
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.
“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 centre and expecting to see staff members in a frenzy, Simeone said, she found everyone outside on the patio eating lunch, 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.
Soon, other people started calling the hospital wondering why they were being called “incessantly,” Simeone wrote on Twitter. That’s when she and the rest of the staff realized there must be something wrong with the phones:
“Very nice @HawaiianTelman says it might be an issue with one of our phones, or some of the software. He confirms that, yes, a bazillion calls are coming from one line. But I look at our office line. It’s not that one. He asks me to look around to find the problem line.”
Searching for answers, Simeone sought help from Hawaiian Telcom, the hospital’s phone service provider.
“They were like, ‘Maybe one of your lines is on the fritz,’ “Simeone 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 red-handed — green-footed? — in the middle of a call, the mischievous critter scampered away, turning on the landline’s speakerphone in the process, Simeone said.
“I had no idea that a gecko would be heavy enough to work the touch screen,” she said. “Every time he shifted his foot, he would call somebody else on our recent call list.”
Simeone said the phoneo-bsessed reptile, which was not a patient at the hospital, was about six inches long, including its tail.
She added that the gecko was probably attracted to the warmth of the phone’s touch screen.