A Tokay Gecko
Michelle Carr said she realised her food contained a poisonous reptile after having a couple of bites - Representational image Reuters

A woman from Maine had a shock of her life when she discovered a three-inch tailless dead lizard in her salad.

Speaking about her nightmare, Michelle Carr said she realised her food contained a poisonous reptile after she had a couple of bites. The new mother said that she found something on her fork and assumed it was a slice of an avocado. She later realized that she had probably been munching on a tailless dead lizard.

"I put my fork into my salad after a couple of bites and realized that my fork was not in an avocado slice. It was a lizard. It was disgusting. It was a shock. I immediately started to retch," Carr told the Daily Mail.

She added that her friend, who is a New Hampshire-based biologist, has identified it as a blue-bellied lizard generally found in California.

Carr, who is a nurse by profession, now fears that she and her baby whom she is breastfeeding might contract salmonella and E coli. "There's no way to know whether or not I actually ingested the tail or not," she was quoted as saying by WMUR.

The new mother went on to say that she wasn't able to believe what just happened. "The first time and only time I've ever bought a bag of pre-packaged lettuce, this happens. Go figure," she added.

Local media reports stated that after the incident, Car called the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration and Shaw's, which is a supermarket in Portsmouth from where she bought the packaged lettuce on 26 January, for an explanation.

A spokeswoman from the supermarket reportedly told her that the lettuce was distributed by a California-based company. A spokesman of the state Health Department also replied to her, saying that the food was packaged and shipped from another state, so any probe would have to be conducted by the Food and Drug Administration.