His salad days may be over

McRat in McSalad?

It hasn’t been the best of months for the Todd Haley family. The Dallas Cowboys’ passing-game coordinator found himself in a shouting match with receiver Terrell Owens, and now comes a stomach-churning McLawsuit.

Haley is suing McDonald’s for $1.7 million in damages, alleging that his wife and the family’s au pair found a six-inch dead rodent in their salad, according to the Dallas Morning News website.

“The family needs closure,” Haley spokesman Scott Casterline told the Associated Press. “It came to a point where you have to draw a line.”

Alas, this all comes a few decades too late for a perfect group of celebrity endorsers: The Rat Pack.

Trivia time

One player involved in a controversial head-butting episode in the World Cup final last summer was born in 1972, the year of the water rat. Who was the soccer player?

Oh, rats

An old Oregon State alumni newsletter, from 2001, carried a long, informative feature about then-football coach Dennis Erickson, now at Idaho, detailing his exciting high school days in Everett, Wash.:

“He was always the leader of the neighborhood sports events, which included baseball, football, track, basketball and a game called ‘rat-flogging’ in which he and friends would wander to the city dump and chase the rodents with baseball bats and nine-irons. There wasn’t much time for girls, except over a burger and fries at the A&W.;”

Of course. Who has time for girls when rodents are terrorizing the town?

Disabled list

It’s not often that royalty is listed as day-to-day.

Queen Elizabeth II was supposed to visit Arsenal’s spanking new Emirates Stadium on Thursday and meet Coach Arsene Wenger and team captain Thierry Henry but couldn’t make the gig because of a strained back muscle, according to press reports.

Coming off the bench as a substitute was Prince Philip.

Trivia answer

The head-butting and now-retired Zinedine Zidane of the French national team.

Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, wrote about the attributes of those born in the year of the rat:

“According to Chinese folklore, this sign can be quite complex and people who are born under [it] possess strong leadership skills and are intelligent, charismatic, artistic, charming, persuasive, attractive, generous to loved ones, and ambitious. On the negative side, rats can be exploitive, dangerous, dreamy, deviant, selfish ... stubborn, manipulative, frail, and vain.”

So, finally, an explanation for the Marco Materazzi incident in the World Cup final. Blame it on the rat.

And finally

Olympic star Gary Hall Jr., on swimming in morning finals at the Summer Games in Beijing in 2008:

“I feel better in the afternoon, and evening, and it doesn’t matter how many cups of coffee I’ve had. It’s not about money for the athletes at all. You can’t tell me you decide in high school to go into swimming and wrestling for money. If you do, you’re asking to be committed.”

lisa.dillman@latimes.com