Chicken fried rat: it’s a hoax

The viral “deep fried rat” story emerging out of California this week has residents in a whirl after images were widely distributed on social media.

Devorise Dixon, a 25-year-old Californian man took to Facebook after allegedly biting into an oddly shaped piece of chicken and discovering it was a breaded rat.

In his Facebook post, Dixon claims to have returned to the KFC where he was served the rat.

The manager of the outlet reportedly apologised for the incident.

Photographs of the alleged fried rodent, along with the story, have been circulating on social media and have made their way to South Africa.

KFC SA has had to field criticism from local patrons who have seen the images and believe it to be a local story.

The KFC South Africa team stated on their Facebook page, “The photo is from the USA and is unrelated to KFC South Africa.”

The “chicken-fried rat” story seems to be one of the oldest urban legends.

Popular myth debunking website, Snopes.com quotes folklorist Gary Alan Fine, who writes, “The frequency of attachment of an urban legend to the largest company or corporation is so common as to be considered a law of urban folklore.”

Dixon’s manifestation of the legend has been declared a hoax by official KFC representation.

KFC Corporate claimed, “A customer has made a serious claim against KFC and refuses to cooperate in the investigation. The images the customer originally posted do not include this second angle because it clearly shows it’s a piece of hand-breaded white meat chicken. Based on this, and the fact that he refuses to allow anyone to see the product, we are left to believe that he intended to deceive the public with this hoax and we are considering all options.”