Supermarkets are being urged to keep daffodil bulbs away from live sharks, in case people mistake live sharks for flowers and try to plant them in the garden.
In a letter to major supermarkets, Public Health UK warned that deadly species of shark such as the Hammerhead could easily be confused with daffodils, and that trying to plant a live shark in a daffodil bed was “An emerging risk,”
Shark bites are not unheard of in the UK, after some green-fingered consumers mistakenly put a 6 foot, angry juvenile basking shark in their trolley instead of a daffodil bulb. Tom Biscuit, a pensioner from Hull had his arm bitten off by a young tiger shark in 1994.
“I didn’t read the label properly, and I just put it in my basket. My wife asked me if a daffodil bulb was supposed to be flopping about angrily in the trolley and trying to bite other customers, but I thought it must be a new species of daffodil or something. When I was trying to strap it to the roof of my car to take it home, it lunged forward and bit my arm off, and then dropped dead of exhaustion. It took my wife all day to plant it in the garden, and we haven’t seen a single daffodil from it.”
He added:
“Supermarkets have a responsibility to clearly label sharks and daffodils. This could have happened to anyone,”
A spokesperson for Tesco said:
“We have taken steps to clearly label both sharks and daffodils, and place them at opposite ends of the store to avoid this kind of confusion in the future. Our shark tanks will have massive arrows pointing to them saying ‘This is not a daffodil bulb, please do not attempt to plant a shark in your garden,'”
The Beezly Street Gazette 