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ESCARGOT FEAR FACTOR STYLE

Fear Factor Contestant Susan Henson discovered why you should always chew your food carefully before swallowing a plate full of live snails as she was pitted against three other well dressed contestants in a race to see who could choke down a plate of ten snails in the shortest amount of time.

FEAR FACTOR: What were you thinking when you found out the stunt was going to involve snails?

SUSAN HENSON: When I saw the snails, I thought to myself, "Oh, no," because of the hard shell. And being that I have a fear of choking, that -- right away, that started to make me nervous.

FEAR FACTOR: How do you feel about eating live animals?

SUSAN HENSON: When they were coming out of their shell and they were actually like -- it looked like they were looking at me. That was really weird. And that kinda freaked me out a little bit. But, again, the hardest part was knowing that I had to chew up that hard shell. And it was scratching my roof of my mouth. It was scratching my throat. It was just impossible for me to get it down.

FEAR FACTOR: Talk me through the stunt.

SUSAN HENSON: After I saw Kasey get through her snails, I knew that I was going to try it. But, once I started actually chewing them, the shell was so hard that I could not get it down my throat.

FEAR FACTOR: What was your breaking point?

SUSAN HENSON: I felt like my throat was closing up and the little pieces of the -- of the snail shell were like just getting caught. And that's why after, you know, the fourth one, I had the fifth one on my mouth. And I just said, "You know what? I'm just -- I'm not doin' it." That's just my own personal thing that I have. I, I wasn't afraid of them hurting me. I wasn't afraid of it crawling back up, you know, my stomach or something. I was just personally -- I know myself. I know the way that I am when I eat. And I have to have a glass of water with every single thing that I eat, even if it's cereal. And eating those snails, after the fourth one, my throat was too dry and too scratched up and filled with snail shells that there was nothing else that was gonna go down. When Joe said that I was a minute and a half in and I wasn't even halfway through, I knew that I could finish the rest of the snails but my time probably wasn't gonna be as quick as Kasey's. So at that point I just threw in the towel.