Stay away from the olives!

This is a true story; not for the faint of heart. The menu here at Cafe Nasty extends beyond the delightful cappucinos and espressos I'm so fond of discussing. We serve breakfast and lunch as well. Sort of light fare, no flapjacks or bacon stacks, just things like oatmeal and soups and sandwiches and stuff. It's mostly food grown locally and organically, which is something the owners take a lot of pride in. You know, supporting small-time farmers cuz we're a small-time business.
Thusly, the food is always fresh, produced with love, and of the highest quality you can get out there. Every now and then, however, something goes horribly wrong in the kitchen. We don't always catch the problem before serving it up and traumatizing some poor customer. What am I speaking of in such vague terms you ask? Animal parts. I know, I know.
I had a muffin returned by a man who claimed there were "pieces of a small animal" in it. Turned out to be a little bit of cat fur- no chunks of flesh thank goodness.
The human fingernail a co-worker gagged on as she downed a chocolate chip cookie caused quite a stir. But boss lady had a stern talk with the cookie baker lady, who promised to hold off on the home manicures while she was baking.

Most disturbing of all was the time a woman found an entire owl pellet in her green salad and mistook it for an olive. For those of you that haven't studied ornothology, when an owl or other bird of prey gets a mouse, he'll eat the whole thing, bones, fur and all. Later on, he'll hack up a disgusting ball made up of all the indigestable mouse parts- teeth, hairs, nasty bits. That's how owl pellets are born! So what must have happened is that the local farm that supplied our greens didn't properly sort through the leaves before shipping them over to us. Somehow, Mr. Owlie was sneaking about in the garden and coughed up one of his little treats right into the Cafe Nasty shipment. Before anyone knew it, the salad was plated and served. We serve three little kalamata olives on the side with our salads, so whoever was on salad duty this particular day hadn't gotten enough sleep and assumed the misshapen, hairy chunk with bones sticking out of it was just a funny-looking olive. Apparently, that's what the silly lady who ordered the salad thought as well, cuz she had the balls to bite into it. I guess she got lucky and was spared a mouthful of baby mouse whiskers, but she did notice that something was off.
Upon returning to the counter and showing her half-eaten lunch to Paul, a Nasty worker, Paul knew immediately what the thing was and could barely suppress his urge to hurl. He was smart enough to go along with her "it's just a funky olive" theory and never reveal the truth to her. He gave her a refund. I hope she got the taste out of her mouth.

Epilogue:
Cafe Nasty no longer gets their salad mix from the owl pellet farm.