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As folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand wrote back in 1988, rumors of mice found in soda bottles and cans have a long history in urban folklore. And as explained in one of our own articles, the supposed remarkable dissolving power of modern sodas is another familiar aspect of urban folklore. Both of those elements came into play in January 2012, when public attention was directed to a February 2011 article from the Madison/St. Clair Record which referenced a lawsuit filed against PepsiCo by a man named Ronald Ball, alleging that after he purchased a can of Mountain Dew soda from a vending machine at work, he found a dead mouse inside of it. Readers of that article focused on a pair of sentences near the end of the story: Ronald Ball did indeed have a pending lawsuit against PepsiCo, as the Record reported back in May 2009: In response to Ball's claims, PepsiCo filed with the court an 8 April 2010 affidavit from Lawrence McGill, a licensed veterinarian with a speciality in veterinary pathology. In his affidavit, Dr. McGill stated that after a mouse had been submerged in a fluid such as Mountain Dew for 30 days or more, the mouse would have been transformed into a 'jelly-like' substance: Likewise, Dr. Yan-Fang Ren of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry averred that a soft drink such as Mountain Dew could dissolve a mouse that was immersed in it, leaving behind only some soft tissue: However, after examining the rodent provided by the plaintiff to PepsiCo, Dr. McGill also ventured his opinion that it could not possibly have been found in the can of Mountain Dew as claimed, because it wasn't even born until several weeks after the can had been filled and sealed:
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