MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — When Australian farmer Rhys Smoker announced he had found a live frog in a bag of lettuce, his housemates initially thought he was joking. The unexpected discovery occurred on Saturday as Smoker was preparing a steak and salad dinner for the three people sharing his house in Esperance, Western Australia.
Housemate Laura Jones recounted the moment on Tuesday, saying Smoker exclaimed, "Oh Bro, there’s a frog in the lettuce." The others were skeptical, responding, "No, you’re taking the mick, like that’s not real." Taking the mick is a slang term for attempting to fool someone.
Smoker brought the bag into the lounge room to show Jones and her partner Billy Le Pine. "Obviously there’s a little frog hiding out and, yeah, we all had a little laugh about it," Jones said. The group named the frog Greg before releasing it at a pond near the house.
Le Pine told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that they gave Greg a send-off by playing the song "Crazy Frog" for him. Crazy Frog is a Swedish CGI-animated character and Eurodance musician. Smoker and his partner Lilli Ashby had purchased the lettuce earlier that day from a Woolworths supermarket in Esperance.
This incident recalls past occurrences of unexpected animals in groceries. Five years ago, a shopper encountered a 3-meter-long (10-foot-long) nonvenomous diamond python on a shelf at a Woolworths supermarket in Sydney. In 2021, another shopper discovered a venomous pale-headed snake wrapped in plastic with lettuce at an ALDI Sydney supermarket.
Woolworths has stated that the frog in the salad was an isolated incident, with no other similar cases reported. "Our teams are investigating this with our suppliers as a priority," a Woolworths statement said. The company apologized to the household and provided a replacement bag of lettuce.
