Wednesday, June 10, 2009

What A Squeak! The Tale Of Malty Mouse


This story about a man getting the shock of his life by finding a mouse splayed across the top of his malt loaf has brought back some unhappy memories.

He bought the Hyndman's malt loaf from a supermarket in the Ballymoney area of Northern Ireland for Christmas two years ago. But God knows what he’d done to upset Santa that year.

One can only imagine the moment he unwrapped the delicious loaf to discover the lifeless mammal embedded in the base of the bread, like Ida, the celebrated ‘missing link’ fossil unveiled in New York last month.

North Antrim Magistrates Court heard that the bread tins were filled with dough every night, and the mouse got in sometime between the tins being sprayed with oil and being filled with dough.

A judge was shown pictures of the incriminating rodent-in-the-loaf and fined D Hyndman and Son Ltd £1,000 plus costs for placing unsafe food on the market.

A defence lawyer suggested the mouse might have been put in the tin to "sabotage" the baker who has been in business for 60 years and has never had any complaints.

The hapless customer is now said to be pursuing a civil case against the firm.

Poor buggers. Mice get everywhere. Doesn’t matter how many traps you set.

Reminds me of the time I was living in a shared house on the Old Kent Road with about 300 Kiwis (don’t feed them water) when I popped some bread in the toaster and saw a small flash from the corner of my eye.

I thought nothing of it, of course, and began buttering my toast furiously, ready for a liberal application of Marmite when I spotted some blue furry mould on the bread.

Perfectly alright I thought, as Sir Julian Bashford would say. Besides I was hungry and those pesky Kiwis had nicked the rest of my bread.

Trouble was it didn’t look like normal mould. It just seemed to be attached to one side of the slice.

I took a couple of bites and then looked down into the bottom of the toaster and saw the electrified mouse. Haven’t eaten toast to this day. Or malt loaf for that matter.

6 comments:

Ellie said...

yuck! That absltly dgustin!

Some Chilean Woman said...

Just curious,

Did you spit out those 'couple of bites' you had or did you swallow them? That would take some guts!

Christophe said...

Sometimes find flour bags in my pantry with big holes in the side.

I remember once saw a huge rat in my kitchen which had my 2 cats pinned up against the wall. Bloody cowards!

Makes me wonder whether it had just been for a trip to the flour bags.

Melinda said...

He bought the malt loaf 2 years ago, and is only now just eating it?
That seems like a long time to expect any self respecting malt loaf to be in good condition with or without a baked in mouse.

Where do you work Christophe? Just asking.

Anonymous said...

Dear Ellie, At your skl did they teach you the importance of vowels in writing?

Christophe said...

Melinda - I work for company called Macmillan Publishing in Kings Cross as a software developer. Why do you ask? :-)