By mid-November 1998, our burgeoning urban legend had received the full dramatic treatment in an anonymous email forwarded to and from Internet users all across the United States. Apart from the implication that the alleged incident took place in San Francisco, the outline of the story remained the same.
Which brings us to the question, how credible is this story?
The answer, giving due consideration to the known facts about cockroach reproduction and human physiology, as well as practical questions concerning the method by which these infestations allegedly took place, is that it is scarcely credible at all. Its validity presupposes the likelihood that:
1. One or more pregnant roaches landed in a batch of chicken meat and remained there undetected by food service workers;
2. The roach — or, at minimum, her egg capsule (called an "ootheca") — survived the standard 140-degree (F.) heat of the steam table;
3. The roach's crunchy body was not seen, tasted or otherwise detected by the customer who allegedly ate it;
4. The egg capsule wasn't swallowed intact, but instead ruptured during mastication, spilling out its contents in the customer's mouth;
5. The eggs "somehow got into her saliva glands" as opposed to being swallowed by the victim and digested;
6. The eggs survived exposure to digestive enzymes in the victim's saliva;
7. The victim was one of those fewer than one-in-four people who are allergic to cockroaches.
8. Precisely the same thing happened more than once, to Taco Bell customers in various locations around the U.S.
In the mold of fast food horror legends of yore
Granted, any one, or two, or, for the sake of argument, even three of the above could conceivably have occurred, but all of them at once? In more than once instance? Believe it if you will, but in so doing prepare to admit you are taking a rather large leap of faith.
The more supportable conclusion is that 1998 saw the birth of a new urban legend following the form of earlier food contamination tales, most notably "The Kentucky-Fried Rat," in which a "funny-tasting piece of chicken" from a KFC restaurant is discovered to be a deep-fried rodent. Such legends play, of course, on the reputed uncleanliness and low quality standards of fast food restaurants everywhere.
Which reminds me. Have you heard the one about the guy who was eating a chicken sandwich at a certain fast food restaurant in Santa Fe and bit into a pus-filled abscess?
Or maybe it was in Toronto. Anyway, true story!
