Posted on 11/06/2018 12:52:56 PM PST by Borges
It was just a silly dare among teenage boys. What could it hurt to eat a small slug?
So Australian teenager Sam Ballard grabbed the slimy creature and gulped it down. He had no idea that the slug carried a potentially deadly worm that would put him into a coma that lasted more than a year, paralyze his body and ultimately take his life.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
That sucks.
It’s the deaths that are SO unusual that must torture families the most.
My cousin’s sister in law died last year of the human version of Mad Cow disease!!
Like one in a million people get it.
Horrifying way to go. She went mad.
How about deaths as avoidable as this? Play stupid games win stupid prizes...
He was a kid!!!
10,000 of us here did MUCH MORE stupid things than this.
Honest, comments like yours make conservatives look like cold hearted idiots.
Don’t eat slugs.
Knowing... is half the battle.
This was posted day ago
He was 19, not 13...
Well old enough to have stopped eating things on a dare.
He was 16. People should know not to do this at about age 8.
The things boys do. On a dare I once jumped off a 60 foot platform into a deep lake. I didn’t land exactly feet first, rather on my butt. It hurt so much, I thought I would be paralyzed (which I wasn’t, thank God)
On the bright side, it cured me of peer pressure forever....
Kudos to you, DP, for calling the poster out on this. Hopefully, it was nothing more than a thoughtless post (something I've been guilty of in the past).
I don’t know why
He swallowed the fly...
It is interesting that the kid was probably inundated by shows like Fear Factor, or Survivor, or Bear Gryllis, or whatever, where people are eating tons of gross stuff. I didn’t know slugs carried a particular deadly worm. I’d been trained that there’re many grubs and larvae you could eat, if you need to. (I know this is not the same...!)
Between the ages of 10-30, I probably did a hundred things stupider than this (not more disgusting, but stupider) and I somehow made it through. I feel for this guy. Every stupid idea has a potential outcome way worse than you imagined.
The scary thing is homegrown lettuce often times has little slugs crawling deep inside the leaves. I mean, slugs the are barely a quarter of an inch long.
I try to thoroughly wash all my garden veggies, but according to this artyicke even the smallest, tiniest slug on a lettuce leaf can transmit this artwork parasite!
Ed
In 2010, 19-year-old Sam, an avid rugby player, was drinking with Jimmy Galvin and several more of his Australian “mates” when a slug began crawling across Galvin’s concrete patio at his home in Sydney.
“We were sitting over here, having a bit of red wine appreciation night, trying to act as grown-ups,”
Rat lungworm disease is caused by a parasitic worm called Angiostronjilus cantonensis. As the name suggests, the parasite lodges in the lungs of rats and is later excreted in poop.
Along comes a slug, snail, freshwater crab, shrimp, prawn or frog, and either eats the rat dung or the parasite works its way into the creature infecting it. Fish, however, do not spread the parasite.
Humans can be infected if they eat the raw or undercooked contaminated animals, or vegetables carrying unseen snails or slugs that have not been thoroughly washed.
“He was 16. People should know not to do this at about age 8.”
My recollection from yesterday’s post was they were drinking wine. If alcohol is involved, people never stop doing stupid things.
ditto, though I dove.
It’s easy to do after the fact analysis and call someone stupid. But the kid was likely a risk taking rugged individualist, which IMO is found in most diehard conservatives.
Now the opposite being he could have been not allowed to “free range”, should have had his helmet on, never allowed away from supervision, if white - be ashamed of it, believe all snails are endangered and should be protected, be a vegan, etc etc.
I was a risk taker as a kid, and as an old phart I still am. Proud of it.
Terrible terrible
I read There were other deaths from that slug parasite, too, including a baby
Something toxic in that small area
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