African lizard found hiding among ramen noodle cups, startling Tennessee store owner
An invasive African lizard was discovered on the shelves of a Tennessee convenience store this week — hiding among the ramen noodles.
How it got inside the Express Food Mart in Lawrenceburg is a subject of debate, but store co-owner Sanjay Patel admits it scared the daylights out of him. The store is about 80 miles southwest of Nashville.
“I was arranging the noodles on the shelf and I felt something soft in the box, then something moved,” he told McClatchy News. “I’ve never seen anything like it before, and my family has been running this store for 11 years. We keep this store clean. I got scared.”
What he’d found was later identified as a Nile monitor lizard. It was about 10 inches long, which makes it a juvenile. A grown monitor can reach “6.5 feet and weigh up to 17.8 pounds,” according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
“I have no idea how it got in the store. It may have come in with the order and been there for days,” Patel said.
Despite being shaken, he calmly used a combination of boxes and brooms to trap the lizard and take it outside.
A customer then offered to take it to Animalogy, a licensed wildlife education program in Middle Tennessee. Staff are hoping it can be included in upcoming education programs — if it survives.
The one thing that remains unsettled is how the lizard got in the store. A debate over the possibilities took off on social media, after a photo of the lizard was posted on the Tennessee snake identification and education Facebook page. (It has more than 65,000 members.)
“This was found in a box of ramen noodles at a local gas station ... and brought to our park,” wrote group member Rachel Grigsby, a seasonal interpretive ranger at David Crockett State Park. “We think we have an ID but curious what others think.”
It didn’t take long for commenters to settle on an ID, and to begin tossing out ideas on how it might have gotten in the store.
“Dang so (it) got into the box from another country?” Jessica Bolling wrote.
“Where were the ramen noodles shipped from?” Jennifer Ogle asked.
“I bet someone either let it go, it got loose, or they placed it in the store to be found and hopefully cared for,” Alisha Paige Evans wrote. “I just don’t see him getting shipped around that much without being noticed.”
Grigsby said the lizard was surprisingly docile when caught, leading to fears it was sickened by its ordeal. Staff at Animalogy are working to nurse it back to health and they are optimistic, she said.
“It is now named Ramen,” she added.
This story was originally published October 1, 2021 at 6:26 PM with the headline "African lizard found hiding among ramen noodle cups, startling Tennessee store owner."