Talk about squashing in your luggage!

The 4ft-long vegetable, which weighed in more than at 4st, was apprehended yesterday by environmental health officials.As well as the squash, the smugglers were caught sneaking in 175lb (79kg) of fish and 94,000 cigarettes from Bangladesh.A spokesman for Solihull Council said: 'The rather unusual giant squash was found illegally imported at Birmingham Airport by our environmental health food safety team.'It is a bit of a rare find, as you can imagine we do get cigarettes a lot, but not a squash, especially not one of this size.'It is quite a funny picture of the environmental health worker next to it as it is almost the same size as her. As you can imagine, it was extremely heavy and we estimated it weighed up to 60lbs which is clearly abnormal for a vegetable.'I doubt we will find another one of these but you never know what people will try and get through. The item has now been seized.'Also found in the illegal haul were 2,000lb (907kg) of betel leaves, a mild stimulant popular on the Indian sub-continent, where it is commonly chewed or smoked.The leaves have been temporarily outlawed by the EU due to concerns they could be carrying salmonella.'Many of the boxes of leaves were mis-labelled or packed at the rear of the consignment,' the council spokesman said.'Some of the leaves have been sent to a laboratory for analysis.'(dailymail.co.uk)ANN.Az