I was visiting my father in Florida and along my brother and I were having dinner with my aunt and uncle. Theirs was a large beautiful custom built home. They were hard working 'salt of the earth' people of modest means until the sale of a few acres of long-held Florida land changed all that.
My uncle who normally didn't drink coffee made a point of drinking the last cup of joe so it wasn't wasted - nothing went to waste in this home. My uncle surprised us with the following story...
My aunt a tall stately lady with flowing white hair, dressed in a formal night gown was combing her hair with a silver comb set. She sat before the elaborate mirror and dresser carefully doing her evening ritual of the '100' strokes when my uncle spotted a bug on her arm. Doing what guys do he tried to flick it off before my bug-a-phobic aunt noticed and went crazy. The creature, identified by my uncle as a small palmetto bug, sensed the impending doom raced up her arm and went into her ear canal. Yes you read right -into her ear. My aunt as you could expect was experiencing her worst nightmare -she could both hear and feel it moving around. Not good. After the initial trauma, which included some prolonged screaming and carrying on they rushed to the emergency room. The attending doctor put a couple drops of oil into her ear and the bug succumbed. (Hint: bugs breath through their skin) The doctor then announced I cannot remove the corpse "it is too deep" you need to see a specialist. Obviously no bug extracting specialist had office hours late at night...
Though I said nothing at first the horror of it struck me. I couldn't help but wonder how well one sleeps with a dead bug in your ear?
Me: "So aunt I suppose you casually made an appointment over the next few days and had the corpse removed?"
Aunt: "no we were at his doorstep first thing the next day"
Uncle: "yeah we had a hell of a night"
Sweet Moses!
My uncle who normally didn't drink coffee made a point of drinking the last cup of joe so it wasn't wasted - nothing went to waste in this home. My uncle surprised us with the following story...
My aunt a tall stately lady with flowing white hair, dressed in a formal night gown was combing her hair with a silver comb set. She sat before the elaborate mirror and dresser carefully doing her evening ritual of the '100' strokes when my uncle spotted a bug on her arm. Doing what guys do he tried to flick it off before my bug-a-phobic aunt noticed and went crazy. The creature, identified by my uncle as a small palmetto bug, sensed the impending doom raced up her arm and went into her ear canal. Yes you read right -into her ear. My aunt as you could expect was experiencing her worst nightmare -she could both hear and feel it moving around. Not good. After the initial trauma, which included some prolonged screaming and carrying on they rushed to the emergency room. The attending doctor put a couple drops of oil into her ear and the bug succumbed. (Hint: bugs breath through their skin) The doctor then announced I cannot remove the corpse "it is too deep" you need to see a specialist. Obviously no bug extracting specialist had office hours late at night...
Though I said nothing at first the horror of it struck me. I couldn't help but wonder how well one sleeps with a dead bug in your ear?
Me: "So aunt I suppose you casually made an appointment over the next few days and had the corpse removed?"
Aunt: "no we were at his doorstep first thing the next day"
Uncle: "yeah we had a hell of a night"
Sweet Moses!
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