Rather long winded, but here goes:
When I was working in the early 90's at Glen Gery brick in Berks County PA, there was a guy they called Snapper, who was one of those Fred Sanford types, he'd always be asking if you, or anyone you knew, needed to have a garage or house emptied, he kept everything, and apparently kept his own home packed to the gills with from emptying other folks properties. Dirty, smelly fella pushing 250 lbs. He lived in a house with his wife and 2 kids, and apparently, they didn't have running water in the place, so he'd bring the family in to shower when the off shifts were running the 12 hour burn at the plant a few times per week, when there were only like 5 guys in the place. He was the guy on your shift, that everybody hurried to beat into, and out of, the shower house, he was a real slob. I was never present to see it, thankfully I was fast enough to shower, dress and split, but guys told me he was fond of digging toe jamb for a good 20 minutes, naked as could be, before getting showered.
Any way, they used to hand out turkeys at Thanksgiving, hams at Easter, etc....to the workers, and one Thanksgiving year, he takes his turkey home to the wife and kids. His old lady is prepping the bird for the oven, and if I recall details correctly, she realizes that she doesn't have something (like sliced pineapple or some for on top of the thing) before it went into the stove, so the entire family piles into his truck and off to the local grocery to pick up whatever it actually was that she needed. Problem is, she left the bird on the kitchen table when they split. Upon returning home, she finished and stuck the bird in the oven. After a while, they smell something that certainly wasn't normal aroma from a turkey. She pulls the thing out of the oven and they realize that a rat crawled into the bird and was what they smelled cooking. The unreal part of my story? They still finished cooking the thing and ate the turkey.
Now I know what you are all thinking, I am full of it, no way anybody could be that disgusting. Lemme tell you all though, this story WAS NOT made up by a co-worker of the dude who lived like Fred Sanford, this story was actually told by Snapper himself, during lunch break one afternoon after the Thanksgiving holiday break, circa 1990.
All that I can say, hearing his words, with my own 2 ears that day, from the dude whose family actually ate the free turkey partially baked with a rat inside of it, is that I thank the heavens above that I wasn't eating turkey leftovers during lunch break that afternoon. Oh, yeah, and how can anybody be that desperate, too? Back then we were all making like $22/hour, could've went out and bought his wife and kids a fresh, uncontaminated bird.....not Snapper, though.
30 years on and I still feel as though I lived through an audition for a Chevy Chase, Vacation type movie that day, and I have never looked at the Thanksgiving holiday the same since.
