Education: Coca-Cola Curator

Sued by an infuriated Coca-Cola guzzler who claimed to have found bits of glass in his favorite drink, the Coca-Cola Co. last week summoned Curator Perry Wilbur Fattig of the Museum of Emory University (Atlanta, Ga.). Curator Fattig, with the blessing of a university which owes most of its wealth to the late Coca-Cola Tycoon Asa Candler, hurried off to a courtroom in Birmingham, Ala. By the time he arrived, looking like a sunburned Julius Caesar in a Palm Beach suit, the case had been settled out of court. But Curator Fattig, determined to do his part, smiled proudly at the judge, crunched and swallowed 16 small pieces of glass.

A priceless asset to Coca-Cola’s claims department is Perry Wilbur Fattig. When a customer says he was harmed by something he found swishing around in the bottom of a Coca-Cola bottle, Curator Fattig stands ready to eat what the customer did. Most cases concern drowned bugs and Curator Fattig has convinced many a jury that creatures drowned in carbonated beverages are harmless. For Coca-Cola and other soft-drink makers he has eaten over 10,000 such creatures, including grasshoppers, crickets, sow bugs, snails, toads, frogs, caterpillars, earthworms, salamanders, tiger beetles, click beetles, praying mantes, stink bugs, kissing bugs, bumblebees and poisonous Central American centipedes. Once he added a flair by eating a black widow spider alive.