A meal he’d rather forget! Customer claims he found a ‘twitching’ MOUSE in his Chinese takeaway mushroom noodle soup
- Sam Hayward, 39, discovered a ‘twitching’ mouse in his mushroom noodle soup
- The Chinese takeaway in Gillingham, Kent has denied ever selling him the food
A disgusted customer has spoken of his horror at finding a ‘twitching’ mouse in his Chinese takeaway mushroom noodle soup.
Sam Hayward, 39, had already started eating when he noticed something moving at the bottom of his bowl.
The shocked takeaway customer, from Strood in Kent, filmed the rodent and rang the local restaurant his girlfriend Emily had ordered from.
But the takeaway denied having provided the food and, having paid with cash, Mr Hayward and his partner were unable to prove their purchase as they had no receipt.
Mr Hayward, who runs construction company Hayward’s Building and Contractors, said he initially thought the rodent was a large mushroom before noticing a ‘tail’.
Sam Hayward, 39, discovered a ‘twitching’ mouse in a mushroom noodle soup he bought from a Chinese takeaway in Gillingham, Kent
The shocked construction company chief filmed a video of the mouse in his soup
‘My missus rang me up asking if I wanted anything to eat and I said I fancied a jacket potato,’ he said.
‘She said she wanted a Chinese, so she won that one.
‘I started eating and got about three-quarters to halfway through it and then thought, ‘That’s a big mushroom, isn’t it?’.
‘It was twitching… I’m no animal expert, but it couldn’t have been alive.
‘The tail was the first thing I saw and it just freaked me out.
‘I couldn’t believe it. It made me feel sick. I probably spent about 25 minutes in the toilet after trying to make myself sick.
‘I just wanted to throw up straight away. I’ve got a pretty strong stomach, but this was another level.
‘Just thinking about it makes me feel sick.’
Sam Hayward, 39, said the Chinese takeaway he bought it from denied selling him the soup
Stunned and confused as to what to do next, Mr Hayward decided to take a video of the mouse twitching in his takeaway to prove to others what had happened.
Mr Hayward explained: ‘I was still in shock. I don’t know why I filmed it but I did.
‘The first thing I wanted to do was get mad at someone so I phoned the takeaway up and they said to prove it.
‘Emily used cash only and we didn’t get a receipt, so we couldn’t.’
Mr Hayward says the Chinese restaurant in Gillingham, where he had been a regular customer for nearly 20 years, have just denied that it was their food.
He said: ‘All I wanted was for them to apologise – it’s just the principal.
‘I didn’t want them to say, ‘Sam, you have free Chinese food for life’… I wouldn’t have wanted it.’
Busy with work, Mr Hayward said he has yet to report the incident to his local environmental health department.
