Joseph Vallenti celebrated his 96th birthday with a big slice of his favorite apple strudel cake, but there was one filling he didn’t count on — a rat.
“Something isn’t right,” family members recall the Commack man saying after tucking into the store-baked “Signature Series” cake from King Kullen supermarket.
Vallenti fell ill with stomach pains and diarrhea. So Neil Gold, who is dating Vallenti’s niece and lives with the victim, investigated the remaining cake — and allegedly found a five-inch-long rat’s tail still attached to the rodent’s hindquarters.
“I saw . . . something sticking out,” Gold said Friday after bringing the allegedly infested strudel to the law offices of his friend, attorney Ed Yule. “I flipped it over and saw the whole tail bleeding into the cake.”
Yule is mulling a lawsuit. “Right now, the immediate reaction is to protect the public,” he said.
Store spokesman Lloyd Singer said there was no known rodent issues and the store is conducting “an internal investigation.”
“King Kullen has had in-store bakeries for over 30 years and there has never been a case of a rodent in one of our store-baked cakes,” he said.