This viral video brings a whole new meaning to Panda Express’ firecracker chicken.
In a viral video with more than a million views, a mother-daughter duo shared how freaked out they were to find that one of their crispy chicken chunks was making strange noises. (Though any amount of notice coming from a cooked piece of meat is cause for concern.)
As a kid, a fast-food dinner is, frankly, awesome. But this Panda Express meal may have scarred a young girl’s relationship to eating out.
In the video, Bridget Danielle (@thelifeofbee_) and her daughter recount that when the young girl went to take a bite out of her food, she heard a noise coming from her food. Unless you hear a crunch from a crispy food item, any food noise is cause for concern.
“Sure as sh*t there was a noise coming from her Panda Express out of the chicken. There was a noise coming out of it,” Bridget Danielle says.
While Bridget Danielle giggles at the situation, her daughter, who looked like she’d already been crying, starts to shed more tears, seemingly freaked out by the incident.
“Her crying is so real,” a commenter wrote.
And who could blame her? There’s seemingly no explanation for why the chicken was making noise, and when things are unexplainable, our minds can go to the worst places.
While Bridget Danielle recorded the noise, it sounds like a subtle squeal. Take a listen for yourself. One commenter said it sounded “like a dog scratching its ear with its foot.”
“Why are you laughing,” Bridget Danielle’s daughter asks her mom, clearly still not over the shock of the situation.
“If anybody knows that that was, please let us know, cuz we’re confused,” Bridget Danielle says, ending the clip.
People in the comments section had a ton of guesses, ranging from the absurd to the plausible.
One person said maybe a worker’s AirPod got dropped in the chicken coating.
Another reasoned it may be hot grease bubbling inside or steam trying to escape.
“It was probably a piece of baking soda that wasn’t mixed properly in the breading and is reacting to the acids in the sauce,” a further user speculated.
A different commenter shared a truly horrifying thought, saying it “sounds like tiny bugs chewing on your chicken from the inside.”
But others were stumped.
“I’m a professional chef and I’m weirded out,” a person said.
“You should have taken that chicken and sliced it open and see what was inside of it making that noise instead of laughing like a hyena,” another commenter wrote.
While Bridget Danielle found the personal attack a bit rude and uncalled for, she shared that she did in fact cut the noisy piece of poultry up.
In the video, she’s seen cutting the chicken up with her plastic fork and inspecting each piece.
@thelifeofbee_ Does anyone know why our panda express is making this noise?!
♬ original sound – Bridget Danielle
While the clicking sound stopped, she never found anything unusual in the meat like a bug or lodged AirPod. And while Bridget Danielle said it could be heat escaping like some viewers guessed, she noted that the chicken wasn’t hot and it was still making the noise.
“Still have no idea what it was. We’ll just chalk this up to a point of confusion in the food industry and move on I guess?” she says.
In other food-related news, there’s a false conspiracy theory going around that Gordon Ramsay wants people to start eating more bugs, a mom found a fake piece of fruit in her Whole Foods blueberries, and Chipotle is allegedly serving raw chicken.
The Daily Dot reached out to Bridget Danielle for comment via Instagram and TikTok direct message and to Panda Express via email.
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