Quebec family catches postal worker who kept feasting on their homegrown tomatoes

When a Quebec woman recently noticed produce vanishing from her family's hanging plants, she thought it might be a hungry squirrel.

But after Paula Habib looked at her security camera footage, it turned out it was a peckish postal worker.

Habib told As It Happens guest host Rosemary Barton that it was "no big deal" at first.

"They're out there. They're red. They're looking delicious."

But when Habib started checking the footage more often, she saw that it wasn't just a one-off snack. 

"Every day he was passing by and more tomatoes were gone. We'd look at the camera and again it was him — picking and choosing and turning the basket round and round to pick the red ones," she said.

"He's like really in there. We had friends that said … 'Put out some bread and mayonnaise and salt and pepper and he can make a little sandwich.'"  

At one point, Habib said the postal worker forgot to deliver the mail and just had tomatoes. 

"[He] realized midway through, 'I forgot to put the mail in the box.'" 

Habib reached out to her post office where she said she got "the runaround." Eventually, she heard back from Canada Post after going to the media with her story. 

Habib said a Canada Post supervisor and the tomato-eating postal worker will be coming to her house on Friday to apologize. She doesn't want him fired, but describes what he did as ethically wrong.

I should go out and buy him a plant.- Paula Habib

"I've always taught my kids not to steal and to me it's stealing. It's the postman that you're supposed to trust."

Canada Post said in a statement that it has talked to the employee and called the incident "not appropriate." 

When asked if she'll be giving the postal worker any tomatoes when he drops by Friday, Habib said, "I should go out and buy him a plant."

Produced by Emilie Quesnel. Written by Katie Geleff.