If you clicked through hoping this was some fun twist or turn of phrase, I regret to inform you it is not. If you’re a hypochondriac, and doubly so if you’re an entomophobe as well, I would highly recommend leaving this page. If not, I take no responsibility for the continued terror that is now attached to any slight rumbling from your digestive tract.
With that out of the way, we all realize that insects are surprisingly hardy creatures, as anyone who’s had a days-long spat with a housefly can attest. If a human got swatted with the proportional equivalent of a 10,000-pound roll of paper and simply walked off a little woozy, they’d be in a government lab by sundown. Unfortunately for all of us, it also seems that the human digestive system is another series of trials and tribulations that these little menaces can endure.
Here are, I am dismayed to tell you, seven insects that were found intact during a colonoscopy…
Fly
Dismaying, yes, but maybe not especially surprising. Flies seem to have a supernatural ability to come out of absolutely nowhere, like in the lens of a colonoscopy camera. They’re remarkably good at evading attempts to capture or kill them. Arguably, to go inside the creature trying to end you is a stroke of genius. Genius that probably ends as soon as you meet stomach acid, but some fly had to try it. Plus, flies famously love shit, so why not cut straight to the source? It’s practically a bank heist for them.
Ant
It’s the job of a journalist to uncover additional information about their topic in order to educate the reader. Still, there might be an ethical argument that certain stories can be left at surface level. For example, when a guy has an ant found in his colon, you can just relay that information, add a “gross!” and file it away. Credit where credit’s due, though, the likely cause was eventually fished out: chicken wings and potato salad at a picnic two days earlier. Meaning the ant may have ridden a piece of chopped celery like the grossest version of Fievel from An American Tail.
Cockroach
Look, this is a gross article altogether, but I’ll admit this is the one that pushed my lunch break back by an hour. Also, one that I will cut appreciably short. Given that they can sweat out a nuclear winter, I guess it’s not too shocking that a cockroach can tank a bit of stomach acid, but it’s still probably not the scientific discovery any doctor is hoping for.
Ladybug
Okay, at least this one is kind of cute. It’s not a hard bar to clear given the context. All I’m saying is it’s definitely not the short straw of the items on this list. It seems like the sort of thing they’d find during the medical examination of a wood nymph instead of a degenerate hoarder. Sure, the best answer from a doctor on their findings is still “nothing,” but this is one that they might not have to ask your children to leave the room for. Something you’d share as a funny fact with your best friend instead of a secret you’d bring to the grave.
Moth
Touching a moth with the outside of your body is enough to send shivers down your spine. They’re horrendously textural creatures, like a damp, living dandelion, and I’d prefer them to gather around a lamp as far away from me as possible. Imagining what it would feel like to have an expired moth lodged in your nether regions is enough to never wear wool again. I’d rather be put in a brazen bull.
Bee
If there, as some sort of horrific curse, must be a creature in my ass, I would prefer it to be unarmed. I’d also like to think that, in the nightmare scenario where I swallow a bee, it would be sufficiently handled by my stomach, and I wouldn’t have to worry about the specific way it tumbled through my intestines. Unfortunately, one cyclist bore out a series of nightmares for all of us when a bee he thinks he swallowed while biking showed up on the other coast.
Yellowjacket Wasp
Okay, bee guy is off the hook. The crown now goes to the unfortunate soul who had a yellowjacket wasp, basically a bee built for war, discovered in his colon. If finding a bee in there is like losing a thumbtack in a car seat, a yellowjacket is like misplacing a switchblade in the couch. No thank you.