Bank of Canada finds 3 geckos roaming around head office

[Joel Sartore/National Geographic/Getty Images]

The Bank of Canada got more than it bargained for when officials ordered a shipment of tropical plants and also unknowingly received three geckos.

According to CTV, the plants arrived at the bank’s Wellington Street head office in Ottawa and were installed about a month ago. The three reptiles were spotted shortly afterwards in the building’s Garden Court and a bank spokesman confirmed they were “removed and safely rehoused.”

The bank suspects the geckos came with the plants and confirmed that no other wildlife had been discovered unexpectedly, CTV reported. The lizards are assumed to hail from the shipment’s starting point in Florida and were likely packed unwittingly with the plants.

This isn’t the first time a scaled invader has turned up at a workplace. In 2014, a Texas office worker tolerated the daily visits of a 13-centimetre (5-inch) lizard, who appeared every afternoon to sun itself on a sofa.

And it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that a large and “mean-looking” lizard was found lurking under a desk last year in Australia, a country known for its large reptilian population.