By Mike Pound

Globe columnist

I have to admit, I really don't know what is lying at the bottom of the bottle of Heineken beer. But whatever it is, I don't want to drink it.

The object at the bottom of the bottle appears to be some sort of mollusk, maybe a cross between a large snail and a small hermit crab. It's hard to tell because the beer in the bottle is murky, and there is a bunch of white stuff floating around it. Now, I'm no marine biologist, but it seems to me that a mollusk's natural habitat is not at the bottom of a bottle of Dutch beer.

Dawn LaPlanter and her mother, Mary Shiff, swear they have no idea how the thing got into the beer, and I don't have any reason to doubt them. Dawn said she bought a 12-pack of Heineken for her mother last Saturday at a Joplin liquor store.

Mary said she's not a big drinker, but she will have an occasional beer.

"I only take one or two at a time and put them in the refrigerator," she said.

Mary said that after she opened the cardboard box that the beer came in, she took out a bottle and noticed that the cap was loose. She said that when she pried the cap off, she noticed something floating at the top of the bottle.

"I didn't know what it was, but I didn't want it to get out, so I opened another bottle and put that cap on it," Mary said.

So the cap on the bottle now is not the cap that was on the bottle when Dawn brought the beer home, which could suggest that Dawn or Mary may have tampered with the bottle.

But Dawn and Mary insist that's not the case and, again, I don't have any reason to doubt them. Mainly because the women really don't seem to want anything from the Heineken folks other than their money back.

See, that's where I'm different from Dawn and Mary. If I found a mollusk-type object at the bottom of a bottle of Heineken, I would be on the phone demanding that a delivery truck full of beer be in front of my house faster than Republicans can pounce on a John Kerry mistake.

Heineken folks: Well, Mr. Pound, how much beer would it take to make this go away?

Me: That depends. How much do you have?

Dawn said the first thing she did when her mom found the little monster at the bottom of the beer bottle was call the liquor store.