Here is the situation. The other day I ordered some dim sum delivered. It was about 80 degrees outside and it sat outside my door for up to 30 minutes because I was waiting for double dash. The food included an order of 4 shrimp dumplings and 4 shumai. These were packaged together in a styrofoam clamshell inside a plastic bag that was tied shut.
There was a slight rip in the outer bag and when I took out the clamshell I noticed a jagged piece missing, about 2.5 cm long and 1/2 cm wide from the top. Inside were 4 shrimp dumplings all with the wrappers half off (note that this is common for this restaurant; the shrimp wrappers are always coming off). There were 3 shumai, all tightly wrapped and appearing intact. In the past I have had a problem where the styrofoam melted from being in contact with hot food so I thought that this could be the problem but the hole in the styrofoam did not have smooth melted edges.
The double dash order contained a small amount of salami which was vacuum sealed in thick plastic and a similar jagged rip was in the plastic. On the stoop about a foot away from where the food was I saw some scraps that looked like they could be a part of shumai filling.
The animals that frequent our complex include many birds and squirrels and the occasional brown bunny. There are also occasional deer. The HOA has reported that some have seen mice but I have not seen them and I have been a little paranoid since the cats died. (I saw a mouse at my last place and set snap traps which killed one but then proceeded to have the peanut butter disappear from the traps without them being triggered. I went away for a weekend and stupidly added some glue traps and came home to find one stuck to the bottom of the cabinets with just a large tail (bigger than mouse-sized) stuck to it. That was when I moved because I was afraid of the revenge of the rat I maimed) In any case, these gashes did not have the little gnawed off corners with tiny teeth marks I saw from the mice.
So what is responsible? Did the styrofoam melt from high temperatures of food contacting it and the restaurant just forget one shumai or did an animal get to my food and if so which kind? Am I in danger if I sort of already ate a couple of pieces? Any chance this could be a bat? I really don’t want rabies.Do I need to throw out everything or only the things with holes?
Maybe a bird with a sharp beak? A hungry Freddy Krueger? Could’ve been anything.
I always thought DoubleDash meant that the dasher would pick up your orders one after the other, and then bring them to you together, not that they would get separately delivered (without notice to you, apparently)? (edit: huh, apparently it’s both… “Both your orders will arrive together” but then later on that same page, “Deliveries may arrive separately.” Shrug.
Just cut off some of the area that might’ve been touched by this mystery critter and you’ll probably be fine. Maybe consider a cheap smart camera or doorbell if this is an ongoing issue for ya… or just have the Doordash guy ring the doorbell.
If you’re really concerned, just complain to Doordash and ask for a refund. If they offer $5, demand more or ask for a supervisor. They’ll do it if you’re persistent.
I wouldn’t eat it. But I’m kinda chicken about things like this.
Yeah, gargle with listerine. Scrub your hands and get rid of the food. (Wash the porch with bleach)
Raccoons don’t necessarily leave teeth marks they are so good with their paws. Like tiny creepy hands. Eeek.
Fortunately most pathogens are adapted only for a particular species or genus, etc, and even then they only survive a short time outside of the host.
You’re not likely to catch something from your dog, for example. Dogs have a body temperature around 102, which is fever temps for us humans (fever being a response meant to kill pathogens).
That also explains why the hypothesis that Covid spread from eating an animal was less likely than the hypothesis that it escaped from the Wuhan Institute of SARS Coronavirus Research, in Wuhan, the origin of the outbreak.
That really doesn’t follow at all. Many, if not the great majority of human infectious diseases (even the now human-specific ones), seem to have first started as zoonoses. Influenza A (birds), malaria (birds, primates depending on species), measles (cattle), yellow fever (primates), plague (rodents), mumps (some sort of ruminant, probably pigs - by the way you can’t get mumps from your dog, but you can give your mumps to your dog), smallpox (possibly camels), hepatitis B (primates), diptheria (livestock of some sort), sleeping sickness (livestock), leishmaniasis (dogs or rodents), etc. Not to mention more recent stuff like avian flu and rodent-transmitted hantaviruses like the one that killed the Hackmans. Actually a lot of infectious disease seems to have arisen after the dawn of agriculture and the development of animal husbandry.
Now that doesn’t mean the converse - that COVID absolutely originated purely in the wild. Just that you can’t say rarity of cross-species transmissions make it less likely.
My guess is stray cat. My cats will tear into the corner of a new bag of their food if I leave it within their reach for too long. They can be very tidy about it, or they’ll leave little shreds everywhere.
I appreciate the well-reasoned response and it all makes sense to me. That said, my comment was in the context of a container having been slightly damaged.
I’d have eaten everything that didn’t appear to have been touched, then I’d hunt the turkey that may have stole the food. Out here in the fields, I fight for my meals.