If you bring biscuits to school on any day of the year, you can bet that you will be the most popular person around. Everyone loves a biscuit! This was certainly the case when a teenage schoolgirl in northern California brought her class some homemade biscuits recently. Nine of her friends gathered around and waited to be given one. What a lovely surprise!
It certainly was a surprise. As the girl handed out her biscuits, she told everyone that they contained a special ingredient. What was it? Some thought it could be honey or chocolate, something sweet and tasty. Others suspected that she may have added some drugs to her cookies: but that would be illegal, right?
As the students began to eat the biscuits, they could feel and hear some crunching going on in their mouths. Inside each biscuit were small grey flakes of something that they could not identify. It was certainly not chocolate or honey. It was not drugs either. Eventually, the girl told everyone what the secret ingredient was. She had added some of the ashes from her late grandfather who had recently died and been cremated.
On learning this, one of her friends said, “I was horrified. It was like eating sand.” Eventually, the school headmaster got to hear about what had happened. Following a discussion with the local hospital, the children were told that eating the ashes of a dead person would not do them any harm. They would not become ill.
But what do you do with someone who put the ashes of a person into a biscuit? After speaking with the hospital, the police were consulted. They had never heard of anything like this. Someone did say that there was a South American tribe that lived along the River Amazon that ate the bones and ashes of cremated relatives. No-one found this information very helpful. After consulting with lawyers, it was decided that no crime had taken place. There was no motive to hurt anyone, and no-one was injured. The headmaster of the school said the incident had been very challenging. What do you think?
You don’t believe this story? Watch a TIME news report on this incident:
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