An endangered-species toad traveled from South Africa to Baltimore in a Hopkins scientist’s sneaker and ended up in her gym locker.

Nancy Connell, a retired microbiologist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, discovered the toad in the locker last week after working out at the gym in the morning. She recognized him right away.

Connell had flown home from South Africa two days earlier and never unpacked her suitcase. On that morning in the gym, the Federal Hill resident pulled the sneakers from the suitcase, threw them in a gym bag and walked to the gym at the Inner Harbor.

The tiny toad that peered up at her from the bottom of the locker after her workout looked just like all the toads she had seen in George, in the Western Cape province, where she had been visiting a friend who runs a nursery on a farm.

She scooped the toad into a coffee mug she found nearby and wrapped the mug for warmth under her coat for the few minutes’ walk to her Inner Harbor office.

After several calls, she found help at Baltimore County’s division of animal services in Jackson. That afternoon, she and a friend went there to deliver the toad.

“We left the toad, and they were busy calling around to zoos,” Connell said.

— Lorraine Mirabella