If you’ve had a hot dog at Wrigley Field this season, you may be thinking something tasted different than years past. And you’d be right: no more rat feces!

For years, the hot dogs contained a “considerable amount” of rat feces mostly for taste and consistency, but now it’s down to barely a trace.

Mike Giernoth of Cicero Beef was surprised to hear that the Cubs requested a subtraction of the feces this season.

“You would be surprised what rat feces do to a hot dog,” he said. “It might sound odd to some but for us in the beefing industry a hot dog with no feces is like putting ketchup on your dog. But hey, it’s their funeral.”

Fans so far have been split on the decision.

“Rat sh*t in my hot dog? OMG!” said Sarah Moore of Lake Forest. “I’m going to throw up, this is so going on my Facebook.”

Troy Cornelius of Logan Square was less hysterical.

“I thought something tasted different and to be honest, I think these hot dogs now taste more like sh*t. Always liked those little crumbles of feces that would give the hot dog that special little snap. Now it’s just limp and lame.”

A Wrigley Field spokesperson explained that the excess hot dogs with feces that are no longer in use will be ground up and laid out into the outfield grass after the new sod is put down after the field is chewed up again. “We are all about recycling, whether it’s feces, sod, urine in the troughs, basically anything.”

Benjamin Trecroci