Frog found in lettuce bag leads to national TV spot for WA housemates

When a group of housemates in Western Australia bought a pair of lettuces in a sealed plastic bag – reduced for quick sale to $1.15 – they got two other things for which they could not have bargained.

One was a live frog reckoned to be the size of a man’s palm.

The other, a slot on national television.

But despite describing it as “the most random thing” they had encountered upon opening a packet of leafy greens from the supermarket, Laura Jones and Billie Le Pine fronted their interview on ABC news breakfast with a series or 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.

As it turns out, the town on the shores of the Southern Ocean in which that bag of lettuce was bought, Esperance, was named for a French frigate – and its twin city is St Martin de Ré.

But far from an intended gastronomical addition, Woolworths said this was an “isolated incident” it was investigating “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.”

And Jones and Le Pine weren’t even the ones who opened the 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”.

Though also highly relaxed, Jones and Le Pine are New Zealanders – as evidenced by her All Blacks and his Warriors guernseys.

That and the fact Le Pine’s accent was so thick the ABC host had to make him 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.

“Greg,” Le Pine said.

Jones and Le Pine not only gave Greg a name, but 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”.

Which meant that when Greg slipped back into the wild, his true identity would remain a mystery.

Frog expert ​​Dr Jodi Rowley was traipsing through the Blue Mountains in search of reptiles on Monday afternoon, so could not definitely ID 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 big 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”.

While the herpetologist said the release of Greg was “well meaning”, she encouraged anyone else who finds a frog in their shopping to put it in a container and contact an expert to have it identified.

Both because the amphibious hitchhiker would be unlikely to survive conditions hundreds from its natural habitat and to prevent the spread of diseases among frogs.

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

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

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