H.D. Coli

My roommate is not known for his attention to detail, and this includes keeping on top of expiration dates and removing rotting food from the fridge.  Knowing this, about once a week I spend some time going through the contents of our community refrigerator – removing hairy strawberries, watching cheese age before my eyes, and reluctantly scraping leftovers not even fit for starving, stray dogs.  I would tell him he should do this himself, but I honestly, I prefer to know that the job has been taken care of, and I can fall asleep at night knowing I do not have to worry about picking a rotten onion out of the drawer when I am making mashed potatoes.

On a walk yesterday he discovered his dog has the same naughty tapeworms that were plauging our dogs a few months back.  I still had some medicine left over from treating the McTerds, so I gave it to him to use for this new infestation.  So, like most dog owners would do, he went into the fridge to find some sort of food item to hide the pills insdie of to trick his dog into eating them.

Well, I guess on my last sweep of the fridge I must have missed the two upper compartments inside the fridge door, because from there Mounds pulled out a pack of hot dogs I knew had been in there for quite some time.  I asked him about the quality of the beef franks as he was readying them with medication, at which point he reassured me that the date was fine, and that they would be fine to eat.  So I let him go about his business, doing my best to not be a major pest, but I did call our dogs out of the kitchen do they did not get any of the questionable dogs.

I returned from Taco Tuesday that evening to find that the pack of hot dogs was still sitting on the counter from early this morning.  At this point I am sure these hot dogs are toxic, and so much so, that I go off to find something with which to pick them up in order to avoid having any of their contamination touch my hands.  While I make a trip to the bathroom to do my business and find some sort of Haz-Mat gloves, I return to the kitchen to find that my roommate has decided to boil the hot dogs.

Again, I chose to bite my tongue and let him go about his business.  I already expressed a bit of concern as to the food safety risk associated with 1 month expired hot dogs that had been sitting in the door of the fridge, opened.  I forgot about the hot dogs and went to bed.

I woke this morning to find that, in what appears to be an attempt to make some sort of food-derived, antibiotic resistant, super-bacteria, the expired, sat out all day, then boiled hot dogs, are now sitting in a pot of cold water on the stove, in the same place they were last evening.  The Hot Dog Coli had been festering in the kitchen all evening, collecting an assortment of bugs for its primordial stew of assorted steer parts.  If you have never seen hot dogs soaked in water overnight, picture if you will a cloudy, slightly browned pot of liquid containing a mish-mash of severely compromised links exhibiting an array of structural anomalies including gaping slashes, massive end-bulges, and complete dismemberment of each fiber.

The H.D. Coli seems to have been contained to that one pot, and we have taken precautions to ensure that all possible bacterial spawn from the pot did not survive.  At this point it does not seem a quarantine in the kitchen area will be necessary, but I will be removing any and all hot dogs from the premises, and banning their uncontrolled use.  For now a major crisis has been averted, but if you live with room-mates, beware of the destruction that can result from improper and careless use of hot dogs.