The Associated Press is now reporting that Clarence Stowers, who found a severed finger in his chocolate frozen custard earlier this week, still has posession of the digit, which he has frozen and is keeping for evidence in a potential lawsuit. (Click above for full story courtesy of the Houston Chronicle.)
We also now have the identity of the poor dude who lost his finger, Kohl's Frozen Custard Employee Brandon Fizer, age 23. When this story first hit the news, some co-workers and I were musing about how much attention the "victim" who found the finger in his custard, and even the finger itself were getting in the media, but what about the REAL victim, the guy who lost a finger?
Apparently, now that Stowers has frozen the severed finger, the cells are too damaged to allow a successful re-attachment to Fizer's hand. Poor guy. If I were him, I'd start a couple lawsuits of my own - one against Kohl's for having unsafe equipment or something (another employee lost a finger on the SAME MACHINE in July 2004, but the State Labor Department found the worker to be negligent, not the company. Maybe they'll change their song soon... and if not, how many more fingers will it take?); and then a seperate lawsuit against the jerk who wouldn't give back my finger for medical attention and re-attachment!
If there are any updates to this case, I will be sure to post them here!
Color, Wonderful Color!
Totally off-topic, but I just wanted to make a brief blog update here.
From now on, each member of The Chili Finger Blog will have their entries show up in a color unique to that member, so you can tell who wrote it right away. Makes things a little easier than having to check the byline at the end of each entry.
My Family & Their Food
I honestly don't remember the timeline for some of the incidents with body parts in their food, but for one family, it's been too many. This isn't counting the insects and fish parts - well, I'll start with the fish parts.
When my parents got married, I was 9. My stepfather's SIL (a fiery Vietnamese woman) begged to do the food. It was going to be a very small affair in the parlor of Stepfather's parents' house. Poon, my soon-to-be aunt, made the usual fair, meats, cheese, punch. And soup. The best soup EVER. It was in a huge bowl, and everyone was grubbing on the soup. After the ceremony as we all ate, the bowl quickly disappeared. And there was something in the bottom of the bowl. Eyeballs. LOTS of eyeballs. Fish eyeball soup, yes it was. Everyone was dismayed thta they had just eaten fish eyeball soup. YICK. Poon was the only Asian person there - no one else would ever have considered eating something so exotic. Before we knew it was fish eye soup - it was delish. But no longer. YICK.
That makes me remember a story my stepfather told me about when he lived on a farm with a foster family (note to readers, I have a humongous family). Ma, his foster mom, was out working in the barn when the kids got home from school one day. On the stove, simmering, was a savory smelling stew. The kids all dug in and ate the entire pot. It was wonderful! But when Ma came in, she was FURIOUS. The entire pot was empty. The kids couldn't figure out WHY she would be so angry. Come to find out, the stew was horsemeat. From a horse that had died a few days earlier. It was DOGFOOD they had just eaten. But, ce la vie - these are the same kids who knowingly ate dog biscuits as snacks.
About twelve years ago, when I was in high school, my mom was still a factory worker. She made envelopes in a factory off 280 & Como. They used these archaic looking machines that needed an operator and a mechanic to run them. The machines started with plain envelope paper and finished with an envelope - it did it all from cutting to folding to applying gum. She made button and string envelopes, Tyvek ones, all kinds. Well, one day she needed a mechanic to fix something. Apparently there were two safety lever that had to be applied before the mechanic could fix the machine. She applied hers, and he applied his, and he did his job. Against proper procedure, the mechanic disengaged his safety without saying anything to my mother. a large piece of her left middle finger was sliced off because of this carelessness. In a panic, my mother's supervisor wrapped the finger in a baggie and then in another baggie full of ice and sent her to the ER.
My mother is forever the procrastinator. She did not go straight to the ER. She came home. Why I'll never know. Perhaps it was some cosmic plan to put this icky story into action. Anyway, I woke up when she got home. She gave me the baggie to put in the freezer and had my stepfather take her to the ER. They forgot the chunk of finger in the freezer. Regardless, the chunk was not the tip of the finger, as was originally thought, but simply a slice out of the side of her finger. About a week later, she had a skin graft from her inner elbow to cover the wound.
Fast-forward 6 months. Mom tells me to take out the small package in the freezer to thaw. Not thinking, I take out the smallest package in the freezer. Several hours later, mom goes to make dinner. "This isn't the hamburger! What is this?" We carefully and cautiously open the baggie together. Yep. The chunk of finger. Complete with the fingernail that got ripped off. We ordered pizza that night.
At least we *found* our baggie. My aunt Patty is notorious for her prolific pet cemetary in her wooded backyard. She loves birds and has at least one at all times. Well... when they die, they go in the backyard, with their old dog Saunter. But when it's winter in MN, the ground is hard as a rock and one must wait until spring to bury any dearly departed pets. So, Patty packaged a bird one winter, in several layers of baggie and put it safely in the freezer chect in the basement. When spring came and the ground thawed well enough to bury her feathery friend... he was nowhere to be found. He was gone. My uncle swore he didn't do anything with the bird. My cousins were too young to have thought to do anything with a dead, frozen bird. Them emptied the freezer several times, and no bird. RIP lil birdie. Wherever you are.
Perhaps the bird is with the rat my mom found in her peanuts at work, some time after the finger incident.
The envelope factory closed and my mom moved on to a place that made delicate pieces for circuitry. She had to do ultraviolet printing on metal about as thick as aluminum foil, treated with chemicals to etch the pattern onto the metal. She would set it up, turn on the ultraviolet light and sit for 15 minutes while it printed. Well, as you might know, my family are salt addicts, and my mother was eating from a bag of peanuts on the night of this particular incident. She was reading a book, as usual, and pulled from the bag a big piece of salted, congealed peanuts, (you know how that happens sometimes?). Or so she thought. Right before putting it in her mouth, she looked at the piece. It was a salted, boiled rat skull. With hair still sticking through the salty goodness. She freaked, but kept the specimen.
When she got home that morning (she worked 3rd shift most of my childhood), she called Planters. They said they were allowed to have so much waste in their product, and would send her a coupon for a new bag. Um -YUCKO MAN! No thank you!. My mom intended to save the skull, as I was going to call a news station - this could be an interesting story! But my stupid stepfather accidentally threw out the bag it was in.
SO, of course most people have their share of "I accidentally swallowed a bug" stories. I have "I almost ate my mom's finger", and my mom almost ate a hairy rat skull" stories. :) Ahhh... family meals together are such an adventure!
This is not real news, but it IS real funny!
I don't want to just cut & paste the story from Bongo News, so check out the link (click above).
Woo hoo! After a short dry spell, I have more news of people in food - another fingertip, but this time it's the real deal.
Clarence Stowers of Wilmington, NC picked up some frozen custard to-go from Kohl's Frozen Custard, and when he got home, he noticed what he "thought it was candy because they put candy in your ice cream ... to make it a treat. So I said, 'OK, well, I'll just put it in my mouth and get the ice cream off of it and see what it is.'"
That didn't work. Still not sure what the "treat" in his custard was, he took it to his kitchen to rinse it off and, upon realizing it was indeed a human finger, "just started screaming."
There is no question as to where the finger came from. Earlier that day, an employee had lost it in an accident. Several other workers tried to help the injured employee, but one who had not been told of the incident scooped some custard where the finger had landed into a pint container, which was then sold to Mr. Stowers.
Click above to read the CNN report on this story.
