When a South African woman bought a loaf of bread and left it in the refrigerator, she wasn’t expecting much. Except to be able to take the bread out and make herself a sandwich as and when needed. Nombulelo Mkumla had purchased the bread at a local store on the 27th of August. The first two days eating it was rather uneventful. As far as daily bread goes.

But on day three, things took a rather unusual turn. ‘On the morning of August 31st, I took the bread out of the fridge to make toast and noticed something disgusting and scary,’ she said, during an interview with a food magazine.

When Mkumla opened the bread, she found something she totally was not expecting. But she couldn’t figure out what it was. So she took a photo. “I sent it to my friends, and one of them said, ‘Yi mpuku leyo tshomi‘.” Translated to English: “That’s a rat, my friend.”

Yes. You read it right. A rat. Or rather, pieces of rat remains, had been baked into her store-bought bread. Talk about finding "interesting" things inside of something else. Unexpectedly.

Mkumla didn’t want to believe it at first. But soon, her denial faded. And disgust took over. “The rat scenario made sense – it’s possible the rat got into the bread at the factory, and no one noticed," she said. Her video of the discovery didn’t take long to go viral after she posted it on Facebook. People shared it. International media reported on it. And soon, the bread supplier had issued a statement.

PepsiCo South Africa responded to the incident by calling it an “isolated occurrence”. The already outraged public went into overdrive. The woman claims she had received a call from a representative of the company. But it was a call that left a bitter taste in her mouth.

Here’s what she said they said: “I sincerely apologize for what happened to you. It shouldn’t have happened, but you must understand that it gets hot where we bake our products, so things like this are bound to happen.’ Yes, I admit that your bread had a rodent. We are putting measures in place to prevent this from happening again. Don’t worry; it won’t affect you health-wise.” We might beg to differ.

Mkumla definitely isn’t the first person to find something unexpected inside her food. Here are some other equally indigestible moments. Some are shocking, some are surprising. There have been stories about people finding anything from bandaids, to frogs, to teeth and even needles in the food they worked so hard to buy.

She's also not the first to find a rodent in her meal. As this magazine reported, "Matt Jones was eating at a Subway in Lincoln City, Oregon with coworkers back in 2015 when he said one of his coworkers opened up his sandwich and found a dead mouse between the spinach and cheese."

If you ever watched the movie Forrest Gump, you might remember the scene where he says his momma told him that “life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.” Personally, we'd prefer the surprises to stay out of our food...

Have you ever opened, or bitten into something, and found something unexpected? Let us know in the comments.