Road Apples
Dec. 1, 2008


Worms of mass destruction and other health issues

By Tim Sanders

You may not believe this, but I was once a magnificent physical specimen. I was 6 feet tall, weighed 180 pounds, had a full head of hair and all of my teeth. I had sculptured biceps and triceps. I even had forceps. And whatever a toned, sexy core is, I had one of those, too. In automotive terms, I had the grace and sleek lines of a Ferrari. I don’t like to brag, but when I slipped into my baggies and Huarachi sandals and strolled along the beach, people marveled. The phrase I heard over and over again was, "I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anything quite like it!" But I didn’t stick to my recommended maintenance schedule, and although I have maintained my weight pretty well, I’ve shrunk to 5 ft. 6 in., and rather than having the grace and sleek lines of a Ferrari, I now have the grace and sleek lines of my dad’s old Rambler station wagon. I’ve had my valves ground twice, my carburetor overhauled, and several of my parts are not what you’d call original equipment. And just to complete the automotive metaphor, I’m probably looking at some very expensive head gasket replacement, wheel realignment and rear end work in the near future.

So in this week’s column I’d planned to discuss health issues. One of my Michigan relatives recently called, and we discussed a young man–by my calculations he’s a step grand nephew–who like me suffers from Type 1 diabetes. This young man has not been careful in managing his diabetes, and his health is suffering because of it. In my youth I went down that same road, and therefore thought I’d pass along some helpful health maintenance hints which would apply to diabetics and non-diabetics alike. After all, everyone knows that if you want reliable marital advice, you go to a marriage counselor who’s been married six times; he knows exactly what to avoid. So during this holiday season, when all of us tend to do some really unhealthy things, who better to go to for reliable health advice than an old diabetic who’s broken all the rules and slowly morphed into a mere shell of his former manly self?

But last week I stumbled upon a news article which drove that health column right out of my head. It concerned an ominous threat to train passengers everywhere. And even if you seldom travel by train, you need to be aware of one of the greatest and yet most overlooked dangers involved in mass transit. That’s right, I refer to the beetle larvae peril.

The article appeared on November 25, and was attributed to an AFP source. I was not sure just what an AFP was, but I researched the acronym and narrowed it down to either the Australian Federal Police, the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer, the Association of Forensic Pathologists, A Fool’s Paradise, or the Agence France-Presse. Since the words "beetle larvae" and "France" just seemed, somehow, to go together, I assumed it was the latter. But you may take your pick.

Here’s the article:


"JAPANESE MAN RELEASES HUNDREDS OF WORMS IN TRAIN

TOKYO (AFP) - A Japanese man was arrested for releasing hundreds of beetle larvae inside a moving express train to try to scare female passengers, police said Tuesday.

‘I wanted to see women get scared and shake their legs,’ police quoted 35-year-old Manabu Mizuta as saying.

He was arrested on the spot by a patrolling police officer after releasing the creatures on the Keihan line in Osaka prefecture.

‘He would go close to women on the train, any woman, and pour out the worms from containers,’ said a police spokesman.

Local police had been on the alert after 10 similar cases of released worms had been reported this month by the same train operator.

‘When the arrest was made, the man had nearly emptied a container which is believed to have held 200 worms,’ he said. ‘You cannot count them because there are so many.’

Mizuta had 10 containers in his backpack estimated to contain a total of 3,600 worms, police said.

‘We have the worms sitting inside the police station right now,’ the spokesman said. ‘You see them wriggling inside their clear cases. It’s really disgusting.’"


Now granted, you may feel that there’s no real threat to you, personally, since a) you don’t live in Japan, b) you never travel by train, or c) your legs shake all the time anyway, so who’d notice? But don’t let yourself be lulled into a false sense of security. One day you might wind up sharing a cab, or riding in a city bus with a domestic insect terrorist secretly transporting some mutant species of beetle larvae trained to attack your nasal passages and cause uncontrollable sneezing fits. In many states, the anti-beetle larvae laws are woefully inadequate, after all.

We need to nip this beetle larvae thing in the bud. Vigilance is the answer. My advice would be to ask your local mass transit authority (ours is a guy named Bob) which planes, trains, and taxis have encountered more than your average number of beetle larvae infestations over the past few weeks. And, of course, always beware of anybody on a public conveyance armed with a backpack, especially if it appears to be wriggling.