Yuck!

Most of you have heard that the finger found in Wendy's chili was a big hoax. This time it's for real:

N.C. Man Finds Finger in Frozen Custard

A man who ordered a pint of frozen chocolate custard in a dessert shop got a nasty surprise inside — a piece of severed finger lost by an employee in an accident.

Unlike a recent incident at a Wendy's restaurant in California, no questions of truth have been raised about the finger found in a package from Kohl's Frozen Custard.

State officials went to the shop Monday, and the owner confirmed one of his employees lost part of a finger in an accident with a food-processing machine....

Stowers said he spit the object out, but still couldn't identify it. So he went to his kitchen, rinsed it off with water — and "just started screaming."

Stowers said he planned to contact a lawyer.

Shop owner Craig Thomas said the employee who lost the finger had dropped a bucket while working with a machine that dispenses the custard. He tried to catch the bucket when the accident occurred.

Thomas told WWAY that several employees tried to help the injured worker, and that a drive-thru window attendant apparently scooped custard from the bucket into a pint before being told what had happened.

Joe Reardon of the state Agriculture Department's food and drug division said state officials closed the shop while the food-processing equipment involved was cleaned and sanitized.

Sue he will, and I hope he wins big. That place needs to be shut down for good.

That's quite a remarkable series of events that the owner claims. Personally I find it pretty fishy. How much time elapsed between the accident and when the unaware attendant scooped from the bucket? It would have needed to be a matter of mere seconds, unless the workers were so incompetent that they didn't think to warn the one at the drive-thru window.

The owner said he "tried to catch the bucket" -- since there were "several employees" present, why didn't he let the others apply first aid while he took care of the bucket? At the very minimum, I would have been shouting, "Don't use any custard!" over and over until I had the bucket in my hand.

And a pint isn't that large: wouldn't there have been a trace of blood? Granted it's frozen custard, but it's still soft enough to scoop. Perhaps it's red?