A radio presenter in London has adopted seven "caterpillar children" after finding the insects tucked away in his Tesco broccoli.
Sam Darlaston, 27, discovered a small caterpillar hidden inside his "favourite vegetable" as he was cooking dinner one evening.
The Kiss FM presenter decided to keep it as a pet before asking his friend to buy him some fresh broccoli.
However, when his friend returned, they discovered another five caterpillars.
A third attempt at buying broccoli revealed a seventh bug, which was transferred into a box in the living room, alongside the others.
Several of the caterpillars, named Broc, Ollie, Cedric, Carlos, Croc, Janine, and Slim Eric, have now evolved into butterflies, with four still cocooned.
Mr Darlaston said: "I didn’t think they would survive if I put them outside straight away.
"I read that caterpillars only eat their host plant and I didn’t have any broccoli in the garden. So I thought, the best bet is to keep them with some broccoli and they can leave when they’re older."
After researching that it would be safe to release the Spanish white cabbage butterflies in the UK, Mr Darlaston created a small ecosystem in his living room.
"The first one, within three days he was a cocoon, but the last one took around eight days," he said. "But I almost fast-tracked them because I gave them unlimited food.
“Three of them got out and were in the lounge. You’re not meant to move them once they’re cocooned, so one is just in the lounge.
“My housemates have just embraced it and now come and check how they are. They were alright with it, they were just like, ‘that’s how lockdown is going then, we now keep caterpillars’.”
After tagging Tesco in the thread, they refunded him £1.10 for two of the heads of broccoli and said they would log the incident.
Mr Darlaston said: “It’s natural, isn’t it? It means they’re not using too many pesticides which is a good thing.”
Tesco said: "It seems like a hungry caterpillar made its way into Sam’s broccoli. We’re really sorry about this and apologise to Sam for providing an accidental pet with his greens.
"We regularly test our fresh produce for quality but as we encourage our growers to move to more natural production methods and greatly reduce the application of pesticides, this can occasionally lead to the very odd insect being found.”
