Wendy’s Employees Face Jail Time For Pubic Hair Conspiracy and The Leaping Prehistoric Lice

The price for placing a pubic hair in a customer’s chili at a Wendy’s Restaurant in West Virginia? Up to one year in the pokey and a $500 fine. The suspects: Thomas Bender, 32, resident of Moundsville, West Virginia. His alleged accomplice: Josh Monroe, 20, resident of Shadyside, Ohio. The victim: A Moundsville, West Virginia Sheriff’s Deputy.

Wendy’s sacked both Bender and Monroe, as well as the shift supervisor. Wendy’s has also done an internal investigation of the March 15 incident and found it was “isolated”.

Monroe claimed that the shift supervisor was to blame and that Bender was “hungover” at the time. Investigators found that it was Bender’s hair and that Monroe allegedly encouraged Bender to serve the chili “surprise” to the Deputy.

Bender is in custody at the Northern Regional Jail in Moundsville while Monroe posted a $1500 bond.

(Officers) don’t have a chance to go home and get a meal and have to rely on these places,” Cecil said. “And who knows if this has happened in the past? This time we caught somebody.”
–Chief Deputy Kevin Cecil

While the Wheeling News Register reported that it was “pubic hair”, WTOV gave a few more details to this sordid story.

The deputy ordered chili at the drive-thru window on the evening of March 15. In his order the deputy discovered a “ball” of pubic hair. Both men confessed to the crime and claimed they had “purposely targeted” the deputy. The cops were “disgusted” and had Bender tested for “diseases”. Bender faces two charges, adulteration of food, a misdemeanor, and conspiracy, also a misdemeanor. Monroe faces a conspiracy charge.

While the case of the Pubic Hair Conspiracy is interesting on several “gross” levels, I’ve found another case, one that involves science, pubic lice, sex, gorillas, and early man.

The dreaded pubic lice

“The Leaping Prehistoric Lice”

Geneticists, using DNA analysis, recently discovered similarities between Pthirus gorillae lice, or “gorilla lice”, retrieved from primates in Uganda, and Pthirus pubis lice, or crabs, of modern man. This gave rise to a mystery as researchers had first believed they should have found a “substantial difference” between the two types of lice due to genetic mutations. The “small number” of genetic differences suggested to researchers that human lice and gorilla lice may have evolved from a common ancestor and that early humans may have first “contracted” lice from prehistoric gorillas as “recently” as 3.3 million years ago. This gave rise to a mystery: just how did the pesky Pthirus gorillae come into contact with early humans?

Human lice crabs have six legs and are best viewed by a magnifying glass where they resemble a miniature crab. Tannish white in color, female crabs lay “nits”, or pubic lice eggs, on the shaft of the unsuspecting human’s hair and take about a week to hatch. Once hatched, nits begin to “feed” by biting the skin around hair follicles in search of the host’s blood. Their saliva, which contains an anti-coagulant, is the “itch factor”.

A lice’s lifespan is six weeks. Lice can also infect eyebrows, eyelashes, hair on the head, and underarm hair. This is one dinner party where the host kills off his invited “guests” with medicated shampoos containing 1% permethrin or pyrethrin.

Contrary to the public myth, unsuspecting human hosts do not “catch” crabs from sitting on a toilet seat, as crabs die within 24 hours after losing their “host”. Crabs also do not have feet “designed” to “walk” on the smooth surface of a toilet seat. Crabs are usually transmitted by sex or, in rare occasions, from bed linens, towels, or clothes.

Researchers who studied the ancient gorilla crabs wondered just how the Pthirus gorillae crabs were able to latch onto early humans? Gorilla sex with early man was ruled out, with the hypothesis that early man came into contact with the Pthirus gorillae crabs by way of feeding off gorilla carcasses or from sleeping in abandoned gorilla tree nests. While the researchers wrestle with the mystery of how Pthirus gorillae crabs wound up on early humans, I wondered, just how did early humans deal with an itchy infestation without a local drugstore and the use of a medicated shampoo?

Take one moderate size viper, one middle-sized chicken…

The ancient Greeks used as one type of treatment “viper” broth. An old time British “Dispensatory”, published by the College of Physicians London Pharmacopoeia in 1747, gives the recipe: take one viper of “moderate size”, remove head, skin, and intestines, boil the viper in 2 pounds of water, remove the “fat”, add middle-sized chicken, “drawn” and skinned, add chicken fat and viper fat together, set on fire til it boils, take out chicken, cut chicken meat in pieces, place in “broth”, heat until boiling, “take off ‘scum’ with great care, pour out broth, and voila!, you have viper broth! Used to treat “itch”, skin eruptions and “bareness in women”.

The ancient Greeks also used tobacco juice. Crabs were mentioned in the Bible, referred to as the “third plague” sent upon the Egyptians. I can envision God’s voice rumbling from the Heavens, “a pubic plague upon you!” Ancient Greek women also used bacon grease and ashes. Since I couldn’t find a reference to how early humans, before the ancient Greeks or Egyptians, found a solution to the infestation of gorilla lice, perhaps they too, used fat, from sloths or mammoths, mixed with ashes.

Prehistoric Ground Sloth

As for early humans, I wonder what the punishment would have been for workers at the local sandwich shop who placed a pubic hair on a sloth sandwich and served it to a caveman constable?

By LBG

Source – Wheeling News Register – Bond Set for Burger Tampering Suspect
Source – New Scientist – Pubic lice leapt from gorillas to early humans
Source – Medicine Net – Pubic Lice
Source – Mircronuta.com – History of Pubic Lice: How Far Back Does It Go?
Image – pubic lice
Image - Wendy’s Chili
Image – Boiling pot

Tags: ancient greeks, charged, conspiracy, crabs, deputy, DNA, Egyptians, gorillas, lice, misdeanor, pubic hair, recipe, Sex, Wendy's, West Virgina