There are a lot of horror stories going around about people finding stuff that isn’t chicken inside their fried chicken, but I think this one is undoubtedly the grossest one yet.

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Rosemary Thomas was out with her sister, daughter and niece at Popeye’s on W145th St in Harlem, New York when they noticed the distinct face of a rodent’s head – complete with eyes, nose and mouth – in their normally delicious fried chicken. She immediately took to Facebook to vent her disgust:

The Facebook post has prompted an investigation from the city’s health department. Popeye’s themselves were quick to react to the post too, releasing the following statement from spokeswoman Renee Kopowski:

It’s not common to find unexpected items in the chain’s chicken, when things do turn up they usually turn out to be the chicken’s organs.

The corporate office has contacted the franchise owner about the alleged rat head.

Well, I dunno. It does kinda look like a rat head to me and you could imagine some dumbass kid working in Popeye’s in New York might think that it was funny to drop a rat head in the deep fat fryer and service it up. Of course, it might not be a rat head and just look like one, although it definitely doesn’t look like it’s from any part of a chicken does it? Hopefully Rosemary kept the rat so they can do some tests on it and see what the hell was happening.

In fairness to the branch and brand though, it only takes one dickhead weirdo for something like this to happen and that’s most likely what’s happened. It seems kind of wrong to berate them for their food hygiene standards just because of this, but hey they’re probably always going to be synonymous with that now. Unlucky.

For a similar story, remember when this guy found a whole chicken brain in his KFC. Yuck.