I’m with Homer Simpson: “I’ll take a crab juice.”
No, really. In truth, I haven’t consumed Mountain Dew for … er … um … years. Couldn’t tell you when I last did the Dew.
Meanwhile, ABC News’ Chris Bury makes the point of why I never will again.
In 2009, oil company worker Ronald Ball said he opened a Mountain Dew from his firm’s vending machine only to gag on a dead mouse inside. His attorney told ABC News that Ball stuck the mouse in a Styrofoam cup and displayed it to his co-workers. “He immediately called Pepsi,” said attorney Samantha Unsell, so the company could stop production on the assembly line that allegedly snagged a mouse. She said a Pepsi representative came to collect the dead mouse. But the evidence had apparently since been destroyed.
Later, Ball sued the soft drink company, seeking damages in excess of $50,000. Now as it seeks to dismiss the lawsuit, Pepsi argued Ball couldn’t possibly have gagged on a mouse because Mountain Dew’s powerful ingredients would have dissolved the rodent’s body before the can ever reached the vending machine. By then, Pepsi’s experts insisted, it would have become “a jelly-like substance.” In other words, mouse jam in a can. Yum! (If you bought six, would that be a “rat-pack?”)
Seriously. I mean, if the taste wasn’t bad enough …?
I recall an occasion in my more laddish years when claims emerged that people were finding syringes in their Pepsi cans. The company responded that there was no danger, as the soft drink was so acidic that it would kill any possible pathogen. To the one, that actually sounds reasonable. To the other, well, okay, I do, in fact, still drink Pepsi. (What? I can’t drink beer all the time.)
And then, of course, there is talk of polishing chrome with Coca Cola. I once heard something or another about using the stuff to clean stains out of one’s toilet. Whatever.
The bottom line, of course, is that people are already wary of these sorts of soft drinks. But dissolving a mouse to jelly is, so far as I can tell, the crown jewel of things I simply did not expect to ever hear about a food product intended for human consumption.
It’s hard to talk about animal behavior without getting too anthropomorphizing, but think about it this way: In both instances, the whale and dolphins did not appear to be competing with other, they did not appear to be fighting, nor were they cooperating in a goal-oriented way. When scientists say “animals are playing” they don’t necessarily mean “play” the way human children play, but they do mean behaviors that go beyond simple eat/sleep/defend/breed necessities. Play might be learning. Play might be about forming social bonds that help an individual later on. And however you interpret it, spotting examples of spontaneous, inter-species play in the wild is kind of a big deal.
