S a m p l e

Lynn Adams
Salt Lake City, Utah
April 8, 1997

Context:
Lynn and I were eating a picnic lunch at a park in Salt Lake City at the time when she related this story to me. We were just unwrapping our lunches and she happened to have a piece of cold friend chicken. I think it was what made her remember this story and relate it to me.

Text: (This section should be double spaced.)
Did you hear about the woman who went to the Kentucky Fried chicken place on 21st South? She bought a bucket of chicken to take home to her family. On the way home, the smell of the chicken was so tantalizing that she decided to pull out a piece to eat while she was driving home. She bit into an odd shaped piece (as many of them are) and thought it tasted a bit strange; and as she continued to chew, she felt some pieces of fur or something like that in her mouth. She pulled the car over to the curb to stop and examine the piece of chicken she had just bitten into. To have a better look, she started to peel the crispy coating from the piece. To her horror, the batter had been covering a dead rat. She had eaten a bite of Kentucky Fried rat.

Texture:
Lynn said she had heard this story from her cousin a few months earlier when they were bike riding in the city and passed by a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. She and her cousin were laughing about the story and consider it a possibility. Lynn's cousin did not know the woman involved in the story; the cousin had heard the story from a friend who said he knew the woman.

Both of us speculated on the truthfulness of the story and found it hard to believe, but nevertheless it seemed possible if not probable. To this day, I look closely at my Kentucky Fried chicken before biting into it. Lynn and I both agreed that in spite of the story, we would certainly continue to eat at the Kentucky Fried stores because they still have the best chicken in town.

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For reference questions: randy.williams@usu.edu or phone (435) 797-3439. Fife Folklore Archives, Utah State University Libraries, Logan Utah 84322-3000