Chickened Out

[Another article from my "Weird and Wacky Local News File." This story, which ran earlier this year in our local paper, had my germ-a-phobe Spidey senses in major overload. So if you're not eating breakfast, enjoy the wackiness.]

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Theft: On Sept. 8, a resident of Madison Boulevard was inside her home when she heard a knock at her door. She went to the door and upon looking outside, she saw her neighbor running through the yard with her three bags of frozen chicken. The woman had placed the chicken on the front porch to let them thaw. Deputy Scott P. was dispatched to the scene, but the neighbor already had left in her car. As Deputy P. spoke with the victim, the suspect drove back home. The deputy confronted the 23-year-old woman, but she denied stealing the chicken.

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[For the record, I have had bacteria "on the brain" lately. Last night I helped my Littlest One upload photos of her science project. You haven't lived until you've seen what millions of Staphylococci bacteria look like, given a tasty environment and free reign to grow with abandon, then magnified 18 million times. I saw, up close and personal, pictures of 16 different petri dishes filled with the most disgusting specimens of bacteria collected from a variety of common everyday surfaces, all of which I will never be able to touch again. Ick. . .





But I digress. Back to the original point . . . thawing chicken on a porch?! Okay, obviously the victim has never seen a single episode of Dateline where they show you how quickly microbes develop on unrefridgerated thawing food. Maybe she never helped her Littlest One photograph, upload, edit, and identify 16 slides of petri dishes filled with all sorts of deadly bacteria lurking on every surface imaginable. Maybe she never read the warning label on raw chicken which clearly states in large, foreboding letters, "Do not thaw at room temperature." I'm pretty sure a porch counts as "room temperature." And room temperature on a porch in the middle of September in Georgia is bacteria heaven, especially for raw chicken.

And for that matter, why on earth did the thief knock on the victim's door before fleeing the scene with the thawing loot? I know that criminals are typically not the smartest bulbs in the pack; but come on, if this would-be thief was up to no good, what was she thinking? Could it be that she is a fair-minded criminal who likes to give her victims a fighting chance before taking off with the stolen goods? Perhaps it was a just practical joke gone horribly wrong. Or maybe she was just a good Samaritan trying to avert an all but certain gastrointestinal crisis for her neighbor. ~cn]
FYI~The article is here.