Foreign frog found in flowers

It is certainly true that the work undertaken by florists is varied and no two days tend to be the same for those involved in the occupation.After all, they are constantly dealing with different flowers and requests for varied arrangements from customers.However, it is not every day that florists find foreign stowaway frogs in the flora they are tweaking.

According to a BBC report, Ruth Marriner was recently working in a shop in Blackburn, Lancashire when she and her colleagues discovered a poisonous frog from South America.Her employee was unwrapping a bunch of foliage when she noticed the amphibian, which had travelled from its native country to Holland, before restarting its journey and ending up in the UK.It had survived transit all the way from Columbia packaged in cellophane.Experts have identified the creature as a poison dart frog and it is now residing at Blackpool Zoo.Commenting on the experience, Ms Marriner said she has never seen anything similar in three decades of working in the profession.

She added: “One of the florists, Debbie Wilding, was unwrapping some of the foliage we had been sent. She felt it move, jumped back and screeched, ‘there’s a frog in there’.”We all started laughing – you don’t get frogs in foliage we said. Then as we started to investigate … we saw these big goggly eyes. Luckily, the sister-in-law of one of the girls, Louise, works at local agricultural Myerscough College.”We rang her and she told us not to touch it and ring Defra.”

Ms Marriner added that she is glad she did not sell the flowers with the animal inside as this could have led to a completely different situation.A more common creature to be found by florists when they are sorting their deliveries is spiders. They too travel from the countries where the floral offerings were picked.