A woman discovered a tiny frog in the bananas she bought in Surrey, England, that had come from the Ivory Coast in Africa 3,200 miles away, according to a report Tuesday.
Jan Giovinazzo, 71, finished her weekly grocery shopping at Lidl and was about to enjoy a banana when she noticed a tiny frog, the Metro reported. Giovinazzo placed the frog in a plastic container and put him on the radiator to keep warm.
“I religiously check for spiders whenever I buy bananas,” Giovinazzo told the outlet. “I was walking over to the sink to peel it when I noticed something on it. I looked down and thought ‘What the hell is that?’ … I’ve got to say it was very cute.” (RELATED: Frozen ‘Brown Blob’ Turns Out To Be 30,000-Year-Old Squirrel)
As it is illegal to release non-native species outdoors, Giovinazzo called the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), an animal welfare charity in the UK, the Metro reported. RSPCA collected the frog and is making plans to rehome it.
Stowaway frog turns up in Leeds classroom thousands of miles from African home https://t.co/viLWSNonSm
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) March 29, 2023
“We have identified the frog as a Mount Nimba reed frog, a species of frog typically found in the Ivory Coast,” RSCPA Animal Officer Louis Horton told the outlet.
The frog traveled over 3,000 miles with the banana shipment from its home in the Ivory Coast to England.
Giovinazzo shared her discovery on social media and received amusing responses.
Pen Reed wrote, “Yay. Free pet frog with every bunch of bananas is much better than Waitrose.”
Nathan Braceweel joked, “This story is ribberting.”
This isn’t the first time a UK grocery shopper has been startled by a frog. In 2022, a south London resident found a Dominican tree frog that had traveled 4,000 miles in a bag of bananas, according to the BBC. Prior to that, an Ecuadorian frog was found in a bunch of bananas in Northampton.