I realized I was a bit parched while driving to work on Saturday afternoon, so I cheated and grabbed the can of Mountain Dew Toney packed in my lunch. I figured I could buy another from the vending machine later. Sometimes you’ve just got to live for the moment, like those people jumping off cliffs in a… well, a Mountain Dew commercial.
So, I cracked that baby open, took a big swig, and let out an involuntary, “AAAAHHHHH!” I continued driving southbound on I-81, while enjoying Bewitched by Luna, and kept taking occasional hits off the Dew that was now tucked comfortably inside the cupholder in my console.
And when I got to the bottom of the can, I tilted it way up and something solid came washing into my mouth. What the?! My lower jaw retracted, I was instantly sent into a state of pre-vomit, and I pawed at the foreign object (substance?) with my right hand.
A bug! A big-ass bug, with wings!! Blecch! I rolled down my window and spit-out the soda that was still in my mouth. And since I was traveling at 70 mph, it all came flying back in my face and down the side of my neck. Good god!
It was freaking disgusting. I kept looking at the bug, while trying not to focus on the fact that it had been on my tongue only seconds before. Nasty. Also, it had been inside that can for weeks (I’d guess), it’s bugly essence becoming one with the Mountain Dew. And I’d ingested it all! Shit, I’m getting sick all over again, just thinking about it.
When I got to work I took some pics of the thing with my phone, and here are a few:
Any idea what kind of bug that is? One of my co-workers said it’s a “stink bug,” but I have a feeling that might not be a technical term. (Or is it?) As the evening progressed, it seemed like my tongue was swelling. At one point it felt like I was walking around with a flip-flop shower shoe in my mouth, and I think my lips were buzzing. But it might have just been paranoia…
Have you ever discovered something foreign in your food? If so, please tell us about it.
Years ago I was in a Cajun restaurant in Atlanta, and found a beetle in my jambalaya. I called the waitress over and showed it to her, and she accused me of putting it there myself. Like I go around with a pocket full of bugs, bilking restaurant owners out of five dollar rice dishes… I mean, seriously.
Thankfully that’s the only previous episode that jumps to mind. The Mountain Dew thing, though, was much worse than the jambalaya. Yesterday’s dead bug was a whole lot bigger, for one thing, and actually made it inside my mouth. Rolling around in there, and whatnot. <full body shiver> I might have to make an appointment with Jackie Chiles for Monday morning.
If you have anything to tell us about bad stuff you’ve found in your food, use the comments link below. And I’ll be back on Monday. Unless I turn into a fatass insect man with rotating googly eyes, or some shit.
Have a great day, boys and girls.
First…?
I have lived in fear of the foreign object in my beer ever since I saw “Strange Brew.”
It has never happened to me, but I have worked in food service enough in my youth to know that it can, and that is highly disturbing. I look for it, especially in restaurants. I am nothing if not suspicious.
Ironically, I have lived in fear of comedy since I saw Bob and Doug MacKenzie in “Strange Brew.” …and I was one of the 342 people who bought their “Great White North” album 🙂
Third!
It was probably in your car and flew into the can after you opened it. We live a little south of you and stink bugs have been bad this year. Even though it is mid-December, I’m still finding them in the damndest places.
How long have you worked for Mountain Dew?
Ha! That actually made me do a near spit take.
Have you contacted Mountain Dew about this? I am guessing this would be their response.
Much like the people who found the dead frog in their pepsi…I don’t drink soda anymore….thank god.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-frog-in-pepsi-090209,0,473414.story
I don’t work for them but we must protect that which we love.
That IS a stinkbug, and I don’t know the scientific term for it either.
My husband likes corn beef hash. Years ago, I bought a can of it and dumped it into a skillet and started breaking it into smaller chunks and there in the middle was a roach the size of Kansas. That was the very last can of hash I ever bought.
great. i have a can of hash in my cabinet.
No way! Top Ten!
I think I’m gonna pass on coming back frequently to the comment section today. Gross food stories make me queasy. Thank Gawd I don’t have one.
Happy Sunday, Surfers!
Yep, a Stinkbug. No wonder you were gagging. Worst I had was jolly great cockroach in my coffe machine. Luckily my wife had the first cup so she probably got the worst of it. I waited till she finished, of course, before I told her….
Ah, I should point out I discovered it after I drank it….
There isn’t really a whole lot of stuff written on your calendar.
It would be “same as yesterday” in every square.
I found a chawwed upon toothpick in a burrito at a local Mexican joint the first time I ate there. I promptly unrolled the burrito, dumped its entire contents on the floor and left the toothpick in the center of the table. Then I left and have never been back.
Rotating googly eyes sounds kickass.
I agree. Please don’t let a thing like rotating googly eyes prevent you from updating on Monday. We want to hear about it and see some pictures.
Dude…. that’s nasty, There’ s not a lot of insect life outdoors around here around now, but wherever it came from, crap. I’d rather have a live wasp in the car.
Plus, the Jets suck, and I’ve been talking drunken jibberish…
I found a dead fly in a bowl of Tomato Bisque I had at a restaurant in Missouri. I quickly pointed it out to the waitress only to be given another bowl, with, you guessed it, another dead fly. I quickly got up and got out of there.
Hair. Lots of hair.
I also got a cheeseburger from McDonalds that had a bite already taken out of it. BLECH. They did not believe me.
We call those critters ‘shield bugs’.
I would never ever drink that stuff again. In fact I’d be unlikely to even hold a can of anything in my hand. Maybe beer, but that would be the limit.
I once found veins and stringy things in my food when I was a kid. I was told that I was lucky and to ‘eat your Haggis!’.
I was drinking grape and grain at a college party, sat my cup down on a picnic table outside, came back about 15 minutes later and finished it. Later that night when I threw up, which is inevitable when drinking grape and grain, there were about half a dozen june bugs in my barf.
0300 PT…I can just about fall from my bed into my computer chair, which I did a few minutes ago, because I was feeling a little queezy and wanted to spend a few minutes with my friends from the WVSR to forget, if only for a moment, that my gastritis is causing feelings of nausea.
Fucking gross bugs in drinks and food. Fuck me, I’m feeling much better.
jtb
I bought a loaf of bread and discovered something that looked like a band-aid cut into 3 or 4 slices of bread (actually I think it was a cross section of a bag of flour or something.) I took pictures and then called the company. They told me to put the offending slices in a bag and then in the freezer until I received a postage paid mailer from them. I also received several coupons for free bread. IF it was a band-aid, I’m seriously skeeved out, but I really think it was part of a bag.
They were very accommodating and took my concerns seriously. BTW, that is a stink bug. Either it was in the can prior to opening or flew in there after opening. We can hope for the latter option. Blech!
I had stink bugs here this summer, and just the other day, I saw one crawling on top of the computer monitor. I don’t know how they are getting in here.
i found a tiny shell in a can of Shasta cola about 20 years ago. It was around that time I stopped drinking Shasta. I am a big fan of the unpopped kernels of popcorn at the bottom of the bowl ….one time I almost broke a mouthpart on a stone the same size and similar color as a burnt kernel.
Shasta, it hasta be Shasta. (remember the old commercials?) I didn’t know they were still even in business til I saw some of their pop in a Nome, Alaska grocery store a few weeks ago. Gotta say, that way back in the days of my childhood, there was nothin’ finer on a hot Summer day that an ice cold Shasta Black Cherry Soda.!
Shasta Black Cherry was the SHIT back in the day!! Jeez, I haven’t thought about that in years. YUM!
the worst was probably opening up a tub of onion dip and finding a dead mouse in the middle. luckily i stirred it before dipping any chips in it. I don’t buy that brand anymore and I ALWAYS stir my dip before using it… I can understand how people want to sue. I didn’t even contact the company because I couldn’t think about it without feeling sick.
you would be amazed how much is allowed in your food by the FDA. After working in large food processing plants I try not to think about it, ignorance is bliss…
A long time ago in Mississippi when I was in the military, I was eating my raisin bran for breakfast. Since I was still half asleep I was eating on automatic. About halfway through the bowl, when more milk surface was visible, I noticed small black dots swimming around and asked my wife what she thought they were. She said they must be wheat bugs so I kept on eating. Of course she took the bowl away.
It’s not that I’m into gross food and bugs, but the commissary must have stored their dry goods in a warehouse that would be very hot in the summer. We had come across these little critters before in bags of flour and were told that there are eggs in with the flour that hatch when it gets warm. So I figured I’d eaten them or eggs from them before without ill effect. Besides I was too tired to care at the time.
Just curious…were you at Keesler?
Meridian.
Clintcurtis, I was at Keesler in 1983. Basic electronics, Computer and swithcing systems training.
Eating a Taco Salad with my buddy at a Mexican restaurant. He was chewing and made a face and pulled a fake fingernail tip out of his mouth. We called the waitress over and she offered to get him a new salad and picked up his plate and had 2 missing fake fingernails.
I call them stinkbugs too. I found a piece of glove in a can of Campell’s thick and chunky beef stew. I will never buy a can of it again.
It looks to me like there’s a cupla legs and a wing missing…..all protein. right?
Stinkbug
Years ago, as we were finishing up a dinner at an Olive Garden, my wife ate a piece of lettuce from her salad and found half a fly left on her fork. While she was in the Ladies room being sick, I called the waiter over who then summoned the manager. When my wife got back the manager apologized and explained that although they maintained a high level of cleanliness in their kitchen, the salad mix was bought in. Needless to say there was no charge for the dinner. Three or four days later my wife received a hand written apology from the manager along with fifty dollars in coupons and the hope that she would one day give the restaurant another try. Which we did and everything was fine.
Mountain Dew is already pretty disgusting.
Only worse soda than Mountain Dew is Cream Soda. Moutain Dew makes me gag, Cream Soda makes me puke.
It looks suspiciously like one of the new bastards:
“The brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB), an insect not previously seen on our continent, was apparently accidentally introduced into eastern Pennsylvania. It was first collected in September of 1998 in Allentown, but probably arrived several years earlier. As of September 2010, Halyomorpha halys has been recorded from the following 37 counties, although it is probable that they are in all counties:”
We in the agriculture bidness down here in the south are not amused. You are located in ground zero, I believe.
I’m going with the idea that it flew in when you put your soda in the cup holder and took your eyes off of it. For one thing, I imagine he’d have been more, er, dissolved had he been in there since the canning process. Secondly, stink bugs stink (hence the name), so you would have noticed that right away upon opening and/or tasting the soda had he been in there awhile. Thirdly, stink bugs gravitate toward sweet things. Apparently they’re not immune to the siren song of Mountain Dew either. Still, pretty gross experience, Jeff.
I’ve detailed this here before, but I once found a cockroach molded perfectly into a vegetable dumpling. Problem was, it was the last dumpling out of six, so who knows what was in the other five. Amazingly I didn’t puke. But I did call the health department on the restaurant the next day. Deputy Droopy Dog told me the place was teeming with cockroaches, so they issued a warning or some such slap-on-the-wrist nonsense. Yeah, that will work. Never ate there again, of course.
By the way, I’m still finding stink bugs around the house after being inundated with them all summer. We were told they’d all be dead by now. Liar liar pants on fire.
I heard that too. These prehistoric little creatures will survive the bomb. After I had just cleaned the kitchen yesterday, a minute later I went back to the counter and there lay a huge stink bug. Where the hell it came from is beyond me. They just appear out of no where. It was in the middle of the counter and since I had JUST been there, knowing they move the speed of molassas, it had to have fallen from the ceiling (?)
They’re weird that way. Right after I bitched about that yesterday one appeared next to me on the wall….like they know. Freeeeeeeaky.
i only buy bottles of mt dew or any soda for that matter.. you can see inside that way..
I skipped the comments ’cause like knucklehead…too creepy …BUT…bugs in my beer sometimes because I”ll be outside doin’ sumpin’ and have a beer within a 20 ft. radius and, well…bugs like beer. I share but spit ’em out. Part of the deal I guess.
Cut into a bell pepper once and a just as surprised catapiller/ worm thing was in there. No entry hole so the thing grew up in there. He had a split second for a WTF and then went blind from the sudden burst of light and figured he was safe again and went back to eating. I watched him for a while with my own WTF. Had to be a egg/larva on the flower when the pepper formed and grew around him. Must have been a pretty good life for my newly blinded friend all in all.
So…to me…Life is like a bell pepper…………..
OK…crap. I’ll go back and read the comments. Honest. I can handle it.
The more I think about it…you were on the recieving end of a multi-tiered marketing test. MD wants to know what kinda crap they can let slip through and go in their cans before someone takes the time and hassle to sue them. Bugs, feathers, fingernails…etc.
Also…certain ethic cultures have been clammoring for years to have some type of insect included in their can of soda. Some want large spiders and some prefer beetles. Some have even suggested a bug of the month kinda thing. A surprise bug has also been requested.
Look for this testing practice to spread to other markets.
Reminds me of the Stephen King short story “Grey Matter” gives me the creeps to even think about it!
Ok, I log on to read the update after a weekend of total debauchery (I am in the dizzy/stilldrunk/hungover phase from last night’s adventures) & I read about a bug in Jeff’s drink.
Excuse me while I vomick. Ugh.
I’m afraid that stinkbug looks too far gone to have just flown in after you opened the can. I’ll go with your original suspicion, that it made its way into the can at the plant.
I had a white colored Mountain Dew the other day and I wasn’t impressed. It tasted a bit like grapefruit juice.
I found the finger of a latex glove in my slaw at a KFC once. I have no idea what I was doing at KFC to begin with. I don’t understand their success. They have the worst fried chicken on earth.
You have to watch out for bees getting into cans of soda and even canned iced tea. I haven’t been stung, but have spat out one or two unfortunate bees.
Haven’t had a Mountain Dew (It’ll tickle yer innards!) in decades. Had a sip of some a while back and wondered why anyone ever drinks the stuff. I don’t think it will burn, so you can’t use it for fuel like you can with bad booze.
One time I noticed a bubble on a sheet of plywood, and it didn’t seem like a normal delamination so I dug into it. There was a Doritos wrapper under the top ply. Hmmmm.
er, empty Doritos bag under the top ply. I must admit this post makes me a bit queasy too.
I have a number of “stuff in food” stories, mostly do to my past life as a drunken biker bum. At the drunken biker bum commune where I spent several years in my youth bugs in food were a fairly common ocurrence. Much too common to bother with now. However, around this time of year back about 1975 a roomate in a barracks and I thought it would be a good idea to build a 5 foot high, 4 foot base solid beer can Christmas tree. Somewhere in the middle of construction, while rinsing out the cans in a laundry sink. something fell out of a Schlitz (hey, I was in the army, and 20 years old) can. Upon close inspection it was an actual fish head, about the size of my thumb and complete from the gills forwad. I kept it in a jar of alcohol for a couple years. No ill effects, by the way. From the fish head or the random bugs in later life.
And if I find a random hair in my food while dining out, I pluck it from the plate, drop it on the floor, and carry on. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Even if it’s really short and curly?
Hey, are you the same Johnny Virgil who plays that there guitar? Who plays it for himself? Let’s be spontaneous.
.
And yeah, two of us drank all the beers needed to finish the tree, in a couple weeks. Some days that required getting drunk to the point of passing out, then getting up and hitting it again later the same day. Then working in the morning, and starting over.
http://www.myspace.com/icecycle66
New songs at above link.
Drinking beer out of glasses slightly to small to hold the entire bottle makes me feel douchey, but in a good way, like a douche who is proud of the fresh clean hatchet wound it just washed out.
Try this site for identification:
http://www.whatsthatbug.com/
Several Great little stories on this site:
Stink Bug found in Spinich
Stink Bug Survives Microwave
When I was a kid I was contently eating a pack of cheese crackers when I noticed an odd reddish material crusted around the little holes in the crackers where the peanut butter pooches out.. Upon closer inspection i saw that the extra ingredient was clusters of small red ants.
I vote stink bug, as well, saw a piece about them on the news lately, saying they are bad this year and in areas they are never seen usually…….
I’ve seen em’ this year in my area / Pennsylvania, in the house.
They are harmless. Well, probably not for lunch, but otherwise harmless.
The news story said they emit a horrible stench when frightened, or stepped on………
Coulda been worse, Jeff………….
Stink Bug. Had another one just last night. Raid doesn’t do anything to them. Polyurethane spray does them in pretty quickly. Plus they’re nice and shiny.
I’m gunna say stinkbug because it seems that although it’s already been said over 250,000 times in the previous comments it must be word du Jour.
Do I win a prize?
I believe that the Kanawha River looks deep green in the summer in WV because of the amount of Mountain Dew passing literally through the populace and out into the sewer system. You must have got one of those fancy new flavors with “Extra Protein!”
Ewwwww, they say the same “protein” thing about the section of the White River that passes through the gay section of Indiana!
You should send the pics and a letter to Mountain Dew. Who knows, maybe they’ll send you a case or two.
Yknow, my python boot is too tight
I couldnt get it off last night
A week went by, an now it’s july
I finally got it off
An my girl-friend cry
You got stink bug! stink bug, darlin
Your stink bug puts a hurt on my nose!
Stink bug! stink bug! I aint lyin,
Can you rinse it off, dyou suppose?
Helloooo!! Several years ago i was in the kitchen pouring myself a nice tall glass of of Diet Vanilla Pepsi ( judge not lest ye be judged, i like it) and while pouring there was a thunk… a FULL GROWN WASP had been in the can!! I was stunned, and it put me off pepsi for nearly 20 minutes. The wasp was very well preserved, which tells me that the diet pepsi is probably killing me, but fukkit.
You know, Nurse Ratched has a point – it’s all protein, same thing nutritionally as a Big Mac, more or less.
And a helluva lot less calories from fat, too.
Today’s quote: “It’s a small world. But I wouldn’t want to paint it.” – Stephen Wright
(Yes, I know what time it is. What of it? And I can count, too!)