Bucks family's suit: Chicken dish contained rat parts

TASTES LIKE CHICKEN? Not to a Bucks County couple who are suing a Florida restaurant after their son ate buffalo wings there that they say contained rodent parts and clumps of rodent hair.

Richard and Carrie Jasper were vacationing at the Disney resorts in Florida Jan. 25, when they decided to celebrate son Daniel's 8th birthday by taking him and his sister, Alexa, to the Rainforest Cafe at the Disney Marketplace in Lake Buena Vista, according to the lawsuit filed Friday in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court. Daniel ordered a $10.99 buffalo wings appetizer, and after eating "a substantial portion," he and his parents "noticed clumps of rodent parts and hair" in the dish, the suit claims.

Daniel got sick and couldn't eat any more, the lawsuit claims. The family alerted the waitstaff, who whisked the food away and took it off the bill, "but otherwise acted as if serving rodent parts to customers was an ordinary part of their business," attorney Jeffrey S. Kahn wrote in the complaint.

The boy continued to feel so sick that within two days, the family took him to an emergency clinic with "abdominal distress," Kahn said. Landry's, the Texas-based owner of that Rainforest Cafe, later acknowledged to the family that the food "was contaminated by, or while under the control of, Perdue," according to the lawsuit.

The complaint claims negligence and names Landry's Inc., the Rainforest Café and FPP Family Investments, Inc., a Salisbury, Md., manufacturer and distributor of Perdue products, as defendants. The family is seeking at least $50,000 for anguish and suffering and a ruined vacation.

"We have not yet received the lawsuit and have not had the opportunity to review it in detail," said Julie DeYoung, spokeswoman for FPP Family Investments.