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When Karen Bennett bought the food for her family’s Sunday roast she didn’t bank on taking an extra dinner guest home among her supermarket shopping.
But days later when the mother-of-two pulled from the fridge her bag of Sainsbury’s baby parsnips she was shocked to discover a live stowaway inside the packet.
Karen, a charity worker, found the common toad inside the Taste the Difference bag which she had bought from the retailer’s Sittingbourne branch in the town centre.
She said: “I was in shock.
“He sat in my fridge for days. The bag moved and I screamed.”
With Karen’s husband and grown-up son also at home in Tunstall, the trio went about establishing what exactly was in the bag and what they should do about it.
They started with making more holes in the packet to ensure the tiny creature had plenty of fresh air to breathe, having been trapped in the chiller for days, while Karen also took a short video clip of their discovery, which helped document exactly what their unexpected guest looked like.
The parsnip bag said the vegetables had been grown and packaged in Nottingham and so, confident in the knowledge the animal was unlikely to be anything too exotic, the family began contacting local wildlife centres and animal charities for advice.
“I was thinking about what the toad had gone through to get to this stage,” Karen explained.
“Conveyer belts? The bag was probably heat sealed?
“He was dehydrated, but the condensation in the bag would have helped him.”
Despite the creature’s 180-mile journey from parsnip fields in the north to a supermarket in the south, followed by a long stint in Karen’s fridge, the toad appeared to be in remarkably good shape.
After ringing a number of organisations, Karen eventually spoke with the friendly team at Columbines Wildlife Care who kindly agreed to take the amphibian in and nurse him back to full strength.”
Having been found among parsnips, the family nicknamed him Nippy and dropped him off to the Teynham-based charity, where they also fed the sanctuary’s goats the now-unwanted parsnips as well.
“He’s being fed mealworms” Karen said. “He’s getting stronger.
“I have been so worried about him.”
Karen, who contacted Sainsbury’s and sent photos of Nippy, is yet to hear from the retailer but is hoping to use the experience to raise awareness of the work by Columbines which took the toad in.
And when the time is right Columbines - which says it’s “amazing” that Nippy survived his extensive ordeal - plans to release him into a more appropriate environment.
According to The Woodland Trust common toads are a gardener’s friend - sucking up slugs and snails - and famous for migrating en masse to breeding ponds.
However when scared or threatened - the warts on their back can secrete a vile-tasting substance which is its defence against predators.
In some cultures, Karen explained, toads and frogs are considered a sign of prosperity and luck, which she hopes is a good sign at the start of the new year.