Full disclosure: I’m not a fan of Dr. Pepper. I don’t hate it — in fact, I was once very fond of it — but over time Dr. Pepper has lost its appeal, especially as my addiction to Coca-Cola became stronger. But, what was once just a general “meh” toward Dr. Pepper has become full-blown disdain for the product, thanks to a Houston-area family’s horrifying, rodent-y surprise.
On Sunday, John Graves’ three-year-old grandson Kayden bought a Dr. Pepper at a Galveston gas station. Since Kayden is just a wee tyke he was unable to polish off all 20 ounces of the beverage, so Mr. Graves, being an awesome dad, recapped his grandson’s beverage. The next day, Mr. Graves retrieved his grandson’s soda and found this terrifying thing looking right at him from inside the bottle.
Full disclosure (again): As I am not a fan of Dr. Pepper, I am definitely not a fan of any rodent.
Mr. Graves has put young Kayden through a battery of blood and urine tests, such as tests for rabies, contacted the Centers for Disease Control, and contacted the state of Texas. Mr. Graves also took a picture of the 24th flavor and contacted Dr. Pepper, whose spokesman instructed Mr. Graves to send the bottle to Dr. Pepper so the company can investigate.
Mr. Graves, however, wants to hold onto the bottle and the rodent for his own investigative purposes.
“I want to get the rat tested to see where it came from, how it got there, if there is any medical concerns we should be concerned about. There is no telling what could happen to that sample.”
I am having a hard time with this story. What I want to know is how, with all of the safeguards and controls Dr. Pepper claims are in place during their bottling process, could a rodent end up in a 20 ounce bottle. The bottle was full when Mr. Graves bought it, so that rules out the rodent getting into the bottle by chewing through the plastic. But, there may be one theory…
Jay Neal, a food and safety expert at the University of Houston, said that while it isn’t probable for a rodent to squeeze into the opening of a soda bottle, it is possible.
“A mouse can fit through a hole about the size of a nickel. They don’t have bones, they have cartilage, and they can squeeze through it.”
All of a sudden, rodents just got way more terrifying.
Young Kayden is healthy and happy, despite his close encounter. At the time of this writing, Kayden’s tests have not come back. Mr. Graves is still “concerned about the health of [his] grandson.”
Meanwhile, this writer is very concerned about the abilities of rodents to squeeze into places this writer once thought they couldn’t.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMLo2DKHUXI
Featured image by Renelibrary, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.
