Giant python eats guard dogs and Iowa factory recalls deadly kosher hot dogs
Dan Brawner
January 31, 2007
The trick in any good horror story is identifying the real monster out of all the scary possibilities. Recently, there was a news story about Ali Yusof, an orchard keeper in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia who wanted to keep pests and pilferers out of his fruit trees. So Yusof stationed--not one guard dog--but 11 of the fearsome beasts to frighten off any fruit-loving intruders who dared to tread upon his orchard.
Then one day, Yusof noticed that his scary canines were missing. All of them. He followed the dog tracks until, one by one, they abruptly came to an end. What could have happened to his 11 guard dogs? Then Yusof suddenly noticed something that proved to be an important clue. It was a 23-foot long python. With eleven lumps.
Last week, another scary dog story surfaced--this time in Iowa. It seems that Agriprocessors, Inc. of Postville, the largest kosher slaughterhouse in the world, announced that it was recalling 2,700 pounds of potentially deadly hot dogs.
Now, anybody who buys hot dogs must be a brave or reckless individual to begin with. And to invite such an object, not to be found in Nature, into one's stomach is at the very least, an act of blind faith, or at worst, an adventure akin to riding Brahma bulls--often with similar effects on one"s innards.
But kosher hot dogs have a reputation of being the best of a bad lot and they carry a religious-sounding sanction--which is especially important to Protestants who are prone to guilt complexes anyway. Kosher hot dogs contain no pork "products" or fillers but are populated with unspecified and unrecognizable bits of beef and chicken.
The problem with this batch of Agriprocessors' hot dogs was that it were found to be "underprocessed"--by which they presumably meant, undercooked. Upon making this discovery, the company issued a "Class I" recall, the most urgent classification given to consumer recalls, meaning that the product could result in serious illness or death.
No health-related incidents were reported as a result of the potentially deadly dogs. But, to me, the scariest part of this story lay hidden in the fine print--the snake in the grass, if you will. The undercooked franks were produced on November 15. They were marked with an expiration date of March 16. Meat, sitting on the shelf for five months! Are they kidding? What's in those things? Embalming fluid?
It's a doggone shame about Ali Yusof's 11 guard dogs. But it turns out, he never needed them to frighten away intruders in the first place. The scariest thing imaginable was right there all along--a gigantic, carnivorous serpent, as long as a tennis court is wide and he never noticed it. Sometimes you don't see the monster until you step right on it.
Then one day, Yusof noticed that his scary canines were missing. All of them. He followed the dog tracks until, one by one, they abruptly came to an end. What could have happened to his 11 guard dogs? Then Yusof suddenly noticed something that proved to be an important clue. It was a 23-foot long python. With eleven lumps.
Last week, another scary dog story surfaced--this time in Iowa. It seems that Agriprocessors, Inc. of Postville, the largest kosher slaughterhouse in the world, announced that it was recalling 2,700 pounds of potentially deadly hot dogs.
Now, anybody who buys hot dogs must be a brave or reckless individual to begin with. And to invite such an object, not to be found in Nature, into one's stomach is at the very least, an act of blind faith, or at worst, an adventure akin to riding Brahma bulls--often with similar effects on one"s innards.
But kosher hot dogs have a reputation of being the best of a bad lot and they carry a religious-sounding sanction--which is especially important to Protestants who are prone to guilt complexes anyway. Kosher hot dogs contain no pork "products" or fillers but are populated with unspecified and unrecognizable bits of beef and chicken.
The problem with this batch of Agriprocessors' hot dogs was that it were found to be "underprocessed"--by which they presumably meant, undercooked. Upon making this discovery, the company issued a "Class I" recall, the most urgent classification given to consumer recalls, meaning that the product could result in serious illness or death.
No health-related incidents were reported as a result of the potentially deadly dogs. But, to me, the scariest part of this story lay hidden in the fine print--the snake in the grass, if you will. The undercooked franks were produced on November 15. They were marked with an expiration date of March 16. Meat, sitting on the shelf for five months! Are they kidding? What's in those things? Embalming fluid?
It's a doggone shame about Ali Yusof's 11 guard dogs. But it turns out, he never needed them to frighten away intruders in the first place. The scariest thing imaginable was right there all along--a gigantic, carnivorous serpent, as long as a tennis court is wide and he never noticed it. Sometimes you don't see the monster until you step right on it.
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