SUN HERALD (Gulfport, Mississippi) 25 November 07 Frogs in the news: Check your frozen dinner (Dave Barry)
As part of our continuing effort to keep you, the voting public, alarmed, today we present a Special Report titled "Frogs Making News."
Our lead frog hails from West Virginia, where it was the subject of a news story in The Charleston Daily Mail, written by Evadna Bartlett and sent in by alert reader Jeremy Scott. The headline states: Putnam woman finds frog inside her frozen dinner. The story - which is one of the most thorough frog-related stories we've ever seen - quotes the woman, Emily Stover, as stating that she had eaten about three-quarters of a Healthy Choice Chicken Cantonese frozen dinner, and was about to eat the broccoli ("her favorite vegetable," the story states) when she came across what she at first thought was a piece of asparagus. Upon closer examination, however, she discovered, to her horror, that it was a frog.
"I love frogs," she is quoted as saying, "but I don't want them in my food."
The Daily Mail published a color photograph of a concerned-looking Stover holding a small green object, identified as the frog in question, next to a Healthy Choice box. The story states that Stover notified the company that makes Healthy Choice, ConAgra Foods, which sent a representative out to pick up the frog, pack it in dry ice and send it to Omaha, Neb., "for laboratory analysis."
The ironic thing is that some people actually eat frogs' legs on purpose. It is conceivable that we could some day receive another newspaper article concerning a consumer who had come home from the supermarket with a Healthy Choice Frog Cantonese frozen dinner, heated it up in the microwave, then discovered, to her horror, that it contained a piece of chicken.
(Note from the legal department: Barry is not in any way suggesting that there actually is any such product as Healthy Choice Frog Cantonese, or Healthy Choice Snake Cantonese, or Healthy Choice Leech Cantonese, or Healthy Choice Hundreds of Baby Spiders Cantonese; nor is he suggesting that, if these products did exist, they would be contaminated with chicken. Thank you.)
If you read this column regularly but have nevertheless somehow retained at least some brain functionality, at this point you are scratching your head and saying: "Wait a minute! Didn't you already write about a woman in Manchester, N.H., who discovered a one-inch frog baked on one of her pretzels?"
Yes, we did. This means that within a span of only two years, there have been two reported instances of frogs showing up in people's food. And any law-enforcement expert will tell you that, because of the shame experienced by the victims, the vast majority of these cases are never reported to the authorities. The actual number of frogs found in people's food, per year, is probably much closer to 63 million. That is what we here in the professional news media call a Major Epidemic.
Frogs in the news: Check your frozen dinner