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Bugged by an oral intruder

4 min read

The bug was large, with shiny black wings, and it was approaching from the northwest. As my hand left my bicycle handles to swat it away, the bug swooped downward and into my mouth.

Because I was doing about 12 mph and was on a small hill and working hard, I was breathing through my gaping mouth. The bug, perhaps trying to find a shady spot to escape the afternoon sun, flew right on in.

Now, I’m no stranger to bicycle collisions with insects. My sunglasses stop most of them, but occasionally a small, soft flea or some such will enter my mouth or my eye, in which case I will either raspberry it out with my tongue or pull over to dig at my tear duct with the corner of my shirt.

But this was different. This bug barnstormed my mouth, crashing into the roof and then buzzing down my throat. Before I could cough it out, the bug had arrived at the place where my tonsils used to be.

This was a crunchy, crunchy insect. Judging from the wings and the texture, I’m guessing some kind of flying beetle. I don’t know and didn’t care; it was hanging out there in my throat.

It took me five paragraphs to describe things to this point, but in real time it was about one micro-millisecond from leafy glade to epiglottis.

I got off the bike, pulled my water bottle from its cage and began to gulp. The water was cold and lemony and I drained all of it, but I couldn’t dislodge the bug. If the bug refused to go down, I would bring it back up. And so I started coughing on purpose – loud, dry, percussive bouts of hacking that must have been audible a half mile away because, now, passing cyclists were stopping to ask if I needed first aid.

“No,” I told the nice young man precisely as I coughed up a wing. In a funny movie, the wing would have landed on his shirt, but I always cover my mouth when I cough.

There it was in my palm: a black appendage shaped like the sickle moon we had in the sky this week.

As kids, we believed if you swallowed a watermelon seed and then some dirt and then drank water, a melon would grow in your belly and eventually explode. My bug predicament was closer in theme to the other great urban legend: a teacher with a tall, teased hairdo was killed by the poisonous spiders that fell into her hair, built a nest and had babies. I thought of these things as I pedaled back to my car, picturing a one-winged bug sloshing around down there in all that lemon water.

I can’t be the only cyclist who gets bugs caught in the throat. Maybe I should invent a mouth guard that’s a screen, to let the air in but keep the bugs out. Better yet, I should dress like a beekeeper when I ride.

When I got home, I still could feel something crunchy in my throat. I drank some hot tea with no effect, before pouring myself a bowl of Cap’n Crunch cereal; if I couldn’t wash the bug away, I would scrub it away.

If there was any of the bug left in my gullet, a bite or two of the cereal would have swept it away. But the cereal was so tasty I finished the whole bowl. After what I’d been through, I deserved it.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.

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