Report of mouse in burger is probed
Jeanne Mancuso, finishing up her lunch, said she wasn't worried. She orders salads. Tom, polishing off a burger in his delivery truck, was calm. He checks his patties when he removes the pickles.
Inside and outside the busy
Did a customer on Wednesday at the Washington Street McDonald's chomp into a mouse that had been cooked into the patty of his Quarter Pounder with cheese? Or was this yet another chapter in the anthology of urban legends about tiny mammals battered, deep-fried, and chargrilled by fast-food outlets?
No one seemed to know, not McDonald's corporate spokeswoman, regulars at the eatery, or the city Inspectional Services Department, which launched an investigation yesterday.
One thing was certain, though: It was going to take more than a mouse to scare away the devoted among McDonald's customers.
''I don't believe it," said Dorothy, who was sipping a coffee at the McDonald's yesterday and didn't want her last name printed. ''Somebody's trying to pull somebody's leg," she said.
The incident began Wednesday about 2 p.m., when a customer, identified by city officials as Frantz James Jean-Louise, sat down with a female companion, bit into a Quarter Pounder, and screamed that he had found a mouse, said Sal Napoli, owner and operator of the McDonald's. Jean-Louise, who could not be located for comment yesterday, stormed out of the restaurant, vowing to alert news media, according to Napoli.
Yesterday he went to City Hall. Jean-Louise walked into the Inspectional Services Department and produced a plastic bag containing the burger, said ISD spokeswoman Lisa Timberlake.
She could not describe what it looked like or whether it seemed credible. ''We will turn that sample over to the state lab for analysis," she said. ''It was in the wrapper. We don't analyze it, so nobody really looked at it."
Inspectors at the restaurant yesterday found a variety of what Timberlake described as minor violations and gave the franchise until March 3 to fix the problems. Among the violations, she said, were rodent droppings in the storage room, rust around a grease trap, and holes in a loading dock wall. An inspection a month ago was mostly good, she said.
Brigitte Walsh, a McDonald's spokeswoman, said she did not know whether a rodent had been discovered in the burger and that the company hoped to conduct its own analysis of the meat.
''We are looking into this claim, however, we have no reason to believe that this allegation has anything to do with this restaurant," said Susan Pingeton, marketing manager for McDonald's regional office, in a statement e-mailed by Walsh. ''McDonald's adheres to the most stringent food safety and quality control standards in the industry, and we are confident in the quality of the food we serve as well as in the cleanliness of our restaurant operations."
