WHIG-STANDARD (Kingston, Ontario) 09 August 06 Tree frog branches out by hiding in the veggies (Anna Mehler Paperny)
Carrie Pereira had an unusual guest for lunch the other day. While cleaning a head of lettuce she had bought at A&P, she discovered what appeared to be a small, brown blob.
"It wasn't a blob," Pereira said later.
"It hopped away."
The blob, it turned out, was a tiny, but very much alive, tree frog, which now inhabits an aquarium in the Pereira household.
The lettuce, after being washed "a thousand times," was eaten with no detrimental side effects.
"There was really nothing wrong with the lettuce after you washed it," Pereira said.
When Pereira phoned the grocery store to inform them of the frog's presence, she was quickly offered a refund, but declined it.
"It wasn't a big thing," she said. "It was, like, $1.49 for a head of lettuce."
Tammy Smitham, communications director for A&P, said this is the first frog-finding of which she's aware.
"It's the only incident that we've had with a frog or anything of this type," she said, adding that all the store's lettuce is from Ontario and Quebec at the moment, so the frog is "safe to be released" locally.
Smitham said all produce is checked when it's put out on display. But "obviously ... it would be difficult to go right into the lettuce and look at it."
Smitham added that anyone who finds something similar in their produce should bring it into the store with a receipt to obtain a refund.
Now that Pereira has figured out that the tree frog is native to the Kingston area, she said she'll keep it as a pet until it gets a bit bigger.
"It was quite funny, actually," she said, adding that not everyone might be so amenable after finding a tiny visitor in their vegetables. "It's a good reason to always wash your produce before you eat it. You never know what's in there."
Syd Marston, manager at the A&P on Gardiner's Road where the lettuce was purchased, said most inspections are done at the produce's source.
"We have to trim it when we get it in, and package it, [but] there is some stuff that comes in already packaged so we basically put this on the counter," he said.
Marston said consumers should be aware that the groceries they purchase have been grown outside and can contain outdoor creatures. "Stuff that's grown outside, I mean anything could get in between the leaves," he said. "They're supposed to wash all their produce before they eat it ... if you wash it, you're going to catch anything that's in there.
Scott Greenwood, an employee at Bearance's Grocery on Livingston Avenue, said workers usually go through the produce when they bag it and prepare it for display.
"We've never found any on the cases that we've gotten," he said. "If there was, it wouldn't get on the shelves, but it's never happened." Joe Quattrocchi, of Quattrocchi Specialty Foods on Montreal Street, said finding animal stowaways in produce is, for the most part, a thing of the past.
"We haven't seen anything like that in a long, long time," he said. "I think the systems to check and transport the product are such that there's less chance of that happening these days ... the day of the spider or the snake or whatever, that's a thing of the past"
If there are any untoward creatures in fruits or vegetables, he added, chances are they'll be found by store employees before they get to the customer.
"All the product, it's checked, counted and boxes are all inspected to make sure the ... quality's there and when you're checking that, of course you're checking everything else at the same time," he said.
Pereira said that she'll probably be more cautious in future about the produce she buys.
"It makes me a little more leery about what I'm purchasing," she said. "You hear horror stories ... if it was a spider, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation because I'd be dead of a heart attack."
Tree frog branches out by hiding in the veggies