Are You F***in' Kidding Me?!

Apparently no.

Apparently this is for real.

I'm getting this, not from The Onion, but from the Seattle Times, which I believe is a reputable newspaper. (Putting the word "Times" in the title tends to have that effect, while using a term like "Sun" generally has the opposite effect. You'd expect good reporting form a New York Times, whereas you'd expect to read about how the campaign to "Save Jordan's Giant Jugs" is "taking off around the world" from someone like The Sun.)

Anyhow, While doing my daily scan of Google News this caught my eye:
Wendy's offers $100,000 reward for "chili finger's" original owner

So this lady bites into a finger while eating a bowl of Chili at a Wendy's in San Jose, California. She sues Wendy's, but then drops the case once it comes out that she has a history of bogus law suits against corporations.

Of course the bad publicity causes a drop in sales for Wendy's.

Wendy's, in the meantime, has hired a private investigator and set up a hotline to try and find out who the finger belongs to. They've even offered $100,000 "for information leading to the finger's original owner." Why they put the word "original" in there is a mystery to me.

Anyway, looks like they've got a lead from Pahrump, Nevada. Get this: it's a woman who recently had her middle finger bitten off by a spotted leapord, "one of several exotic pets she kept around her mobile home."

What the hell!?

Anyway, doctors said they couldn't put the finger back on because of risk of infection. So Sandy Allman, now missing one middle finger, decided to leave the digit behind. "What would I want it for?" she asked.

They haven't been able to confirm whether the Wendy's finger is hers yet. The local police are waiting for prints on the Wendy's finger to be sent from San Jose to Pahrump. They'll then match it up with her finger prints which are, conveniently, already on file because of past charges related to, "a spate of pet thefts." (Charges were later dropped.)

Despite big losses for Wendy's, it seems that the locals have not lost their wits, or their loyalty to Wendy's. As longtime customer Ralph Woodman, 81, put it: "How the hell would you get a finger into the pot without seeing it in there when you're stirring it? It had to be some sort of screwball ruse."

Thank you, Ralph, for a little bit of sanity.