A disgusted customer has spoken of his horror at finding a twitching mouse after tucking in to his Chinese takeaway soup. <br /><br />Hungry Sam Hayward had already begun eating his his mushroom noodle soup before he spotted something moving at the bottom. <br /><br />The shocked 39-year-old, from Strood in Kent, filmed the rodent and rang the local restaurant his girlfriend Emily had ordered from.<br /><br />But the takeaway denied having provided the food and, having paid with cash, Mr Hayward and his partner were unable to prove their purchase as they had no receipt. <br /><br />Mr Hayward, who runs construction company Hayward's Building and Contractors, said he initially thought the rodent was a large mushroom before noticing a 'tail'. <br /><br />On the meal he'd rather forget, he said: "My missus rang me up asking if I wanted anything to eat and I said I fancied a jacket potato.<br /><br />“She said she wanted a Chinese, so she won that one.<br /><br />"I started eating and got about three-quarters to halfway through it and then thought, 'That's a big mushroom, isn't it?'. <br /><br />"It was twitching... I'm no animal expert, but it couldn't have been alive.<br /><br />"The tail was the first thing I saw and it just freaked me out. <br /><br />"I couldn’t believe it. It made me feel sick. I probably spent about 25 minutes in the toilet after trying to make myself sick.<br /><br />"I just wanted to throw up straight away. I've got a pretty strong stomach, but this was another level.<br /><br />"Just thinking about it makes me feel sick."<br /><br />Stunned and confused as to what to do, Mr Hayward decided to take a video of the mouse twitching in his takeaway to prove to others what had happened. <br /><br />On what made him grab his phone, Mr Hayward explained: "I was still in shock. I don’t know why I filmed it but I did.<br /><br />"The first thing I wanted to do was get mad at someone so I phoned the takeaway up and they said to prove it.<br /><br />“Emily used cash only and we didn’t get a receipt, so we couldn’t."<br /><br />Mr Hayward says the Chinese restaurant in Gillingham, where he had been a regular customer for nearly 20 years, have just denied that it was their food.<br /><br />He said: "All I wanted was for them to apologise - it's just the principal. <br /><br />"I didn't want them to say, 'Sam, you have free Chinese food for life'... I wouldn't have wanted it."<br /><br />Busy with work, Mr Hayward said he has yet to report the incident to his local environmental health department.
