ODDLY ENOUGH

ODDLY ENOUGH

Lizard found in kindergartner’s salad becomes new class pet

PRINCETON, N.J.

A New Jersey elementary school science class has a new pet after a lizard was discovered in a student’s salad after being refrigerated for days.

Riverside Elementary School science teacher Mark Eastburn told NJ.com the 3-inch green anole lizard was found in a bundle of tatsoi greens last week by a kindergartner.

The lizard had been cold and lifeless after being confined in a refrigerator for days, but has since been warmed and lives in a cage in Eastburn’s class.

“It’s a really fitting mascot for our science lab,” he said.

The lizard, dubbed “Green Fruit Loop,” came from Florida. Eastburn said green anole lizards live in the southeastern states, from Texas to North Carolina.

“It probably has some moderate adaptation to the cold, which is why it made it through,” Eastburn said.

The tatsoi had been bought from Whole Earth Center, a natural-foods store in Princeton.

Mike Atkinson, the store’s produce manager, said the greens are cleaned as they’re stocked and that the lizard must’ve been tucked away in a leaf.

“I’ve been in produce for 17 years, and I’ve never heard of a lizard making it to the customer,” Atkinson said.

He said he doesn’t think the lizard would have made it in a conventional, nonorganic box.

“It might normally surprise or freak out conventional shoppers, but the majority of organic shoppers realize that produce is grown on a farm, and there’s lots of bugs and animals that live on a farm, too,” Atkinson said.

British principal tells parents: No pajamas on school run

LONDON

The principal of a primary school in northern England wants to impose a dress code – not on students, but on their parents.

That’s because she’s tired of them wearing pajamas and slippers when they drop off their offspring at the school gates each morning.

Kate Chisholm of Skerne Park Academy in Darlington, 240 miles north of London, said she acted after some parents wore what she considered nightwear to school meetings.

In the letter published last week, she asked parents to “dress appropriately in day wear” when bringing their children to school.

Chisholm said she wanted parents to set a good example for the students, and that it was “not too much to ask parents to have a wash and get dressed.”

Associated Press