What the Chubby Bunny Claims Another Victim
And the actual story’s nowhere near as morbidly delightful as that headline.
The Chubby Bunny in question is not, as it turns out, an actual overweight rabbit, but a carnival game, wherein participants cram their mouths with marshmallows until they are unable to say the words “chubby bunny.”
Unfortunately, it’s horribly dangerous, as 32-year-old Janet Rudd and her loved ones learned the hard way, after Rudd was roped into a round of Chubby Bunny last week at the Western Fair in London, Ontario, and died.
Details come from Ontario’s Globe & Mail:
[A]fter putting four marshmallows in her mouth, Janet quit the contest and walked away from the stage. Fair officials say she spat out a wad of thick, white goop before leaving, and was 10 metres from the stage before she signalled for help. She collapsed, unable to breathe. A crowd gathered around her. First-aid workers tried to perform CPR and called an ambulance. The local ambulance service was on scene within minutes, but couldn’t revive her. According to Chris Darby, duty manager for Thames ambulance, Janet went into cardiac arrest.
“The game is insane,” said John Fish to the Globe & Mail. “You have these esophagus-sized plugs and you’re not allowed to chew them or swallow them, but your saliva’s acting on them and making them slippery—I mean it’s inevitable that someone is going to die.” (Mr. Fish should know—his 12-year-old daughter died after playing Chubby Bunny at school in 1999.)
“You breathe in at the wrong time and you draw a huge airway obstruction down into your airway that is essentially self-sealing,” said Chris Darby, duty manager for Thames ambulance. “It’s like spraying Styrofoam in there.”
Full story here.
I would chalk this one up to natural selection, but I vaguely recall winning a bet in 3rd grade about who could put more marshmellows in one's mouth--- scary!!