Clean inspection nets dirty sausage

This just in: California Care Bears don’t condone curing sausage via diesel exhaust fumes.

I’m not kidding.

“While CVSA guidelines do not address this situation specifically, our entire staff would like to inform our readers: THIS IS NOT A SANITARY METHOD FOR CURING MEAT PRODUCTS!”

Sometimes the interwebs give us gifts of “stranger than fiction,” and these gifts must be shared with the general public. Especially when they involve sausage, a California Highway Patrol CVSA inspector with the true and real last name of “Koop,” and a clean Level I inspection.

Here’s the story
Of an un-named driver
Who was curing homemade sausage with exhaust
There were 4 feet of strung-up casings
Just hanging by the tires

Until the one day when the driver met this inspector
Who could not begin to even have a hunch
Of why someone would believe it’s sanitary
To eat sausage that’s been cured with diesel belch

(Everybody sing along with the chorus!)

The Sausage Bunch! The Sausage Bunch! That’s the way they all became the Sausage Bunch!

OK, stop singing “The Brady Bunch” theme and read. Because you’ll want to know this story for Counter of Knowledge reference.

It appears that sometime last week, Mr. Roadkill (fictitious name alert) was pulled around back at the Mount Shasta chicken coop for a Level 1.

(Side note – the Mount Shasta coop is now known as Dunsmuir Grade Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Facility, and has been since 2011. Referring to this facility as a “coop” is in no way derogatory, as the enforcement officers have referred to the post as such since it was just a little ol’ scalehouse. You can read about the history of the post and confirm that this is not a filthy lie here.)

As fate would have it, one of Mr. Roadkill’s inspectors on the team at Mount Shasta coop, happened to be Inspector Koop. (Reference above – gifts from the interwebs, also, his true and real name.)
Inspector Koop was first to notice the loops. Of sausage.

“It was so odd that, rather than assume anything, it was just easier to get the guy out of the truck and ask him,” Inspector Koop told Land Line. “It is definitely the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen.”

While the inspector declined to share the driver’s name, he did recall that the inspection went well.

“No violations that I recall,” said Koop. “He left here with the sausage just like it came in. Said he’s been curing his sausage that way as long as he’s been driving.”

(Of course I asked. Are you kidding me? I want to know as bad as you do.)

According to the information provided to Inspector Koop, the driver has had a 15-year driving career thus far with solid plans to continue driving and smoking his sausage with diesel exhaust and road kill crumbs until he’s unable to do so.

So there you have it. If you’re ever parked somewhere and hear, “Larry, are you done stringing your wieners up?” while waiting to be loaded or unloaded, it’s not a figment of your imagination. It’s a gift. From The Sausage Bunch.