THe year of the Rat
It’s funny how in the Chinese/Japanese horoscope, each year is marked by an animal and in 2008, the year is marked by the rat. With many themes going on to “celebrate” the year of the rat, you can find rat rolls being served to you at bakeries.
Okay, they are not made from real rats, just buns and cakes shaped into the same of mice and rats stuffed with completely yummy stuff awaits you. :)
However, the year of the rodent may bode well for some people especially born in the year of the Dog/Tiger, the rodents themselves are finding themselves in a tough spot. Rat infestation is increasingly a menace in food chains and restaurants, rendering many businesses at risk of closing from the health ministry.
But the new year’s edition of Friday (1/11-18) relates a somewhat less amusing story regarding real rodents that infested yet another familiar US icon: McDonald’s.
It seems that a rat made a live appearance at a branch of the McDonald’s fast food chain in Tokyo’s Shibuya district and was captured on camera foraging at the sales counter before scampering out of sight toward the food-preparation area.
The rat appeared to be approximately 10 centimeters in length and in well-fed, robust condition.
As it turned out, the five black and white photos of “Mackie” — as we’ll call Friday’s furry four-legged friend — were shot seven years ago by Yasuko Funamoto and Takashi Hotta, in an outlet of McDonald’s on Shibuya’s Center Gai — a popular promenade where the capital’s youth love to come to stroll, shop and dine on junk food.
“There’d been rumors from some time ago that the shop had been infested with rats and I went to take a peep,” one of the photographers is quoted as saying. “I was really startled to see one, so I grabbed my camera and shot through the window glass.”
At the time, the outlet was closed for the night, and the rat made its foray in an empty shop. Following extensive renovations, that same outlet changed to 24-hour operation and the rats no longer have the run of the shop after closing time, since there is no closing time.
But Friday’s story raises the point that, like many other companies in the food business, the burger chain has not been immune to the growing number of scandals over slipshod sanitation methods or serving of ingredients beyond their freshness date. Indeed, such a scandal erupted at the end of November.
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