Frogs Turn Up In Salads More Often Than You Would Think

Stuart V Nielsen

A photo of a dead frog in a Pret A Manger salad made the rounds on social media Monday and garnered many shocked comments, but finding amphibians in lettuce is more common than most people realize.

And sometimes the frogs are still alive and hopping.

Here's a roundup of some news stories from the past few years that mention frogs (both dead and alive) found in lettuce:

• A woman in Minneola, Fla. found a live frog crawling around in her bag of Market Fresh lettuce that she purchased from Wal-Mart.
• A Brooklyn mom was surprisingly OK with finding a live frog in her lettuce from the Park Slope Food Co-Op. She took it to an animal facility that put it up for adoption.
• A Detroit woman also set free the tiny frog she found hopping in her lettuce.
• This California teacher decided to keep a frog she found in her bagged lettuce from Costco as a pet.
• A woman in San Antonio, Texas had been eating her Fresh Express lettuce bought from a Super Target for several days before she noticed a dead frog in the bag. It was missing a leg - she thinks she might have eaten it.
• A writer composed a column for The New York Times about finding a frog in her lettuce. She was distraught about having to flush it down the toilet.
• The frog-in-lettuce phenomenon has also struck across the pond - The Guardian reports that in the span of two weeks, two Londoners found frogs in their lettuce.

It's not completely clear why so many frogs are getting caught in bags of lettuce, but lack of pesticides on organic lettuce might have something to do with it.

Pesticides that quickly kill frogs are often sprayed on non-organic lettuce, but many people opt for natural greens to avoid possible harmful effects of the chemicals.