Live frog found in Coles shopper's bunch of bananas
A mum received a fright when she opened her fridge on Sunday to find a live Queensland tree frog that has somehow ended up in a bunch of bananas from a Coles delivery.
Tasmanian woman Rebecca Saunders said the stowaway was hiding in the produce from a Coles supermarket online home delivery order she had unknowingly unpacked a few days earlier.
“I was shocked when I found him!” Ms Saunders told Yahoo7.
The mother said she initially laughed about the discovery of the green and yellow frog in her fridge, which her boys named Franklin, but was shocked the amphibian made it from Queensland alive.
“We have had big fruit fly scares recently and I had expected biosecurity would have been all over checking produce.
“It was lucky I didn’t just let him go – he was a huge risk to our local frogs. Queensland frogs have a lot of diseases our Tassie frogs don’t.”
A Coles spokesperson confirmed to Yahoo7 today that bananas cannot be grown in Tasmania due to the cooler climate.
The fruit they said is shipped from Queensland while they are green, and ripened locally prior to sale, so there was no biosecurity risk.
“Unripe bananas cannot host fruit fly, and so the fruit is not a vector for Queensland fruit fly to enter Tasmania,” a supermarket spokesperson said.
The Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment Tasmania (DPIPWE) said processes were in place with both exporters and importers and at the state border to reduce the risk of unwanted pests, such as frogs, arriving in consignments from the mainland.
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However it appears Franklin made it past the checkpoints unnoticed – and he’s not the first stowaway to have been smuggled across the border.
“Individual frogs are sometimes found in consignments shipped to Tasmania hidden among layers of bananas. These reports are investigated in order to understand the circumstances,” the DPIPWE said.
Ms Saunders confirmed Biosecurity Tasmania collected the frog on Tuesday, and it was still alive at the time.
Biosecurity Tasmania urged anyone to notify them of any unfamiliar animal found amongst imported food produce by calling the Invasive Species hotline on 1300 369 688.
