A carpark at a residential complex in the Mid-Levels found itself visited by an unlikely reptilian intruder Monday.
Police arrived at Grandview Tower on Kennedy Road at around 1 pm after receiving a report from a security guard about the sighting. Upon arriving at the carpark, they found the two feet-long creature lurking in the carpark amid the parked vehicles.
Photos online showed the brown and green reptile between two parking spaces. In another picture, it is seen hiding under a car.
Local media earlier reported the creature to be a chameleon. However, experts at the Hong Kong Society of Herpetology Foundation believe that is unlikely because the city’s hot environment is not suited for chameleons, according to HK01.
The reptile, they believe, might be a Chinese water dragon, which reside in southern China and Southeast Asia. Chinese water dragons are not native to Hong Kong, the experts said.
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The foundation first spotted them in Tsing Yi in 2000, and since then, have also identified the creatures in Sha Tin’s Shing Mun River and Pok Fu Lam. They are not poisonous but can bite if there is an attempt to catch them.
A snake wrangler later arrived at the carpark to handle the reptile.
In 2017, a giant Chinese water dragon measuring four foot long was spotted on a tree in a Wong Tai Sin housing estate.
