When anyone goes out to the kitchen to start preparing food they probably just mindlessly pull out ingredients from the fridge and the cupboard without really thinking about it.
But one woman got a huge surprise last week when she pulled out a bag of spinach from Lidl in preparation for a meal and found a lot more than just leafy greens in the bag of vegetables.
Katherine Bacon, 32, from Sussex, screamed out to her husband when she noticed that in the bag of spinach was a 10cm long lizard just lying there having been there for nine days since they bought the packet.
When her husband James Bacon, 36, came through to the kitchen to see what had been going on he initially thought the lizard was dead as it was lying belly-up in the packaging.
James said: "We got some spinach and got a free pet included as well. My wife took the spinach out [of the fridge] and she screamed out, 'what the hell is that?'
"We were shocked. We couldn't believe it. It had been there for about eight days. We thought the lizard was dead obviously, but [then] I sort of prodded it. I think it must have gone to sleep, and then it woke up and started walking around the bag.
"When it started moving, we were shocked [saying], 'oh my god, it's alive. What are we going to do?"
The pair then took their reptile friend to the RSPCA Reptile Rescue centre in Brighton in the hope they would be able to find a home for it and one of the volunteers has reportedly shown an interest in the creature once he has finished a quarantine period.
The head of reptiles for RSPCA Brighton said: "At the moment, he's doing really well. They're not really kept in captivity that often, and they're quite cryptic and understudied creatures.
"A lot of European species around this time of year will go into what isn't hibernation, but a similar kind of state. That's probably why he managed to survive [in the fridge] as opposed to a more tropical species.
"He'll get rehomed into a larger, naturalistic enclosure that's mimicking his home environment as closely as possible, so he can live as best a life as he can now [that] he's unfortunately made it into captivity."
Footage James took shows the little lizard peeking out of the packaging while the pair tried their best not to let him escape.
A spokesperson for Lidl said: "We were very sorry to learn of this matter, as it is never our intention for a customer to be dissatisfied in any way. We work very closely with our suppliers to ensure that the products we sell are of the highest possible quality for our customers.
"We are, therefore, disappointed if our expected high standards were not met on this occasion.
"Following initial contact from the customer with our Customer Services team on the 8th January, the matter was immediately escalated to our Quality Assurance department who are in touch with the customer."
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