Live Frog Found in Discount Lettuce Bag in Western Australia

When a group of housemates in Western Australia purchased a sealed plastic bag containing two lettuces, discounted to $1.15 for quick sale, they received two unexpected additions: a live frog approximately the size of a man’s palm and an appearance on national television.

Despite describing the discovery as “the most random thing” they had encountered upon opening a packet of leafy greens from the supermarket, Laura Jones and Billie Le Pine delivered their interview on ABC News Breakfast with a series of ready-made one-liners.

“Look, if I was in a French supermarket, I probably would have got a two for one deal on that one,” Jones quipped.

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The town of Esperance, where the lettuce was purchased, was named after a French frigate and is twinned with St Martin de Ré. Woolworths stated that this was an “isolated incident” being investigated “as a priority.”

“Our suppliers have rigorous processes to maintain product quality,” a company spokesperson said. “For heads of lettuce this involves washing and a number of quality checks, which includes checking for foreign materials, before they are packaged and sent to our stores.”

Jones and Le Pine were not the ones who opened the lettuce packet.

“All credit to our flatmates eh,” Jones said. “It’s their lettuce and they came home and he’s just in the kitchen cookin’ up and then he’s like: ‘bro, there’s a frog in my lettuce.'”

“He’s one of the most relaxed Australians you’ll ever find.”

Although equally relaxed, Jones and Le Pine are New Zealanders, as indicated by the All Blacks and Warriors guernseys they wore. Le Pine’s accent was so strong that the ABC host asked him to repeat his lines.

“We named him Greg, so he had a name at least, yeah,” Le Pine said.

“Sorry what did you name him?” anchor James Glenday asked.

Jones and Le Pine not only gave Greg a name but also performed a ceremonial release into a nearby dam.

“We thought we’d give him a wee send off tune,” Le Pine said. “And we played him Crazy Frog for him. So he was pretty happy again.”

When Greg slipped back into the wild, his true identity remained a mystery.

Frog expert Dr. Jodi Rowley, who was searching for reptiles in the Blue Mountains on Monday afternoon, could not definitively identify the species on the small screen to which she had access.

“But it’s a bell frog for sure,” she said. “If it came from WA, then it’s a relatively common species of frog called the motorbike frog. If it is from the east coast, then it is either the green and golden bell frog, or the southern bell frog – and both of those species are threatened.”

“So I guess the origin of that lettuce is the big question.”

While admitting it was “very strange” to see such a large frog in such a small bag, Rowley has written about the “thousands of ‘stowaway’ frogs” that are “inadvertently shipped from all around Australia.”

“Certainly, it is a thing that frogs accidentally hitchhike,” she told the Guardian. “They go to sleep on a pile of bananas or a lettuce – or whatever the case may be – and they end up getting packaged.”

Although the herpetologist said the release of Greg was “well meaning,” she encouraged anyone else who finds a frog in their shopping to place it in a container and contact an expert for identification, citing the frog’s unlikely survival far from its natural habitat and the risk of spreading diseases among frogs.

“Typically, [stowaway frogs are] rehoused, quarantined – and then they become people’s pets,” she said.

While Jones, Le Pine, and their flatmates may have missed out on a free pet, they did not leave the exchange empty-handed.

“We have spoken to the customer to apologise and provide a replacement item,” the Woolworths spokesperson said.