I swallowed a bug this morning. The bug wasn’t a particularly large bug, perhaps the size of a gnat or a tick, but I’m pretty sure the bug was neither a gnat nor a tick. The consistency was far more chewy than that of either the gnat or the tick. I suspect that a tick would crunch under the pressure of my carnivorous jaws.
However, I know for certain that a gnat would merely dissolve in my mouth, that I would barely be able to recognize that a living gnat had entered my mouth and begun the long digestive trek that ends unceremoniously in my intestines. I’ve swallowed gnats before, and the bug I swallowed this morning was not a gnat.
I also believe that the bug I swallowed this morning was not a fruit fly. Now, I’ve never personally swallowed a fruit fly, by accident or through experimentation like one might do with, say, a cockroach or a beetle. But I imagine that a fruit fly would suffer the same fate as a gnat once confronted with the acidic ocean of saliva on the tongue of someone so recently unemployed as I.
I’m guessing that the bug I swallowed this morning was a hybrid of sorts, a bastard child conceived of a drunken cricket and a desperate ladybug. I don’t think it could have been any other type of bug, because this bug fought like hell to survive the involuntary contractions of my throat. The bug had to have had issues � huge, emotionally crippling issues � in order to put up a fight as long as this one did. No ordinary bug would have known such coping techniques.
If the bug I swallowed this morning was in fact not a special bastard bug, but one of those unremarkable pure bred bugs from a stable home with two supportive parents, I sincerely hope that the father bug doesn’t come looking for my ass.