We were on a camping trip to beautiful Fort Stevens, Oregon, and my son Peter and I were picking blackberries and thimbleberries along a trail. We had just encountered a nice big patch of ripe thimbleberries, and were eating them avidly - they have a great taste, a little nutty, with a touch of honey. Thimbleberries are native to the Pacific Northwest, and you'll never find them in stores, because they're extremely delicate and usually get a bit smooshed when you pick them.
Obviously there was one ant that thought as highly of thimbleberries as I do. While eating, I got a scratchy feeling in my throat, like something wouldn't go down. I thought I had perhaps eaten a bit of dried leaf stuck to a berry, or swallowed an insect. It wasn't painful, but it was uncomfortable and didn't go away.
We biked back to our campsite, my throat still feeling weird. I gargled, and then tried eating a piece of bread to push whatever it was down my throat. No luck.
I had my husband Eric look at it. He said "There's a black thing in there". I had the kids, with their sharp eyesight, look at it. They told me that there was an ant stuck in my throat! I looked in the car mirror, and it was pretty visible, clamped onto my uvula, which is the dangly thing hanging from the back of your throat.
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| Can you see it back there? By the way, on the right that's a silver filling, not a rotten tooth. |
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| Now you can see it, right? |
Then I just reached back into my throat with thumb and forefinger, and pulled it off. There was a little tug as as I pulled it off - it was clamped on pretty well!
It sure was a relief to get the ant out of my throat. I had no problem ignoring my gag reflex - having an ant in my throat was a powerful motivator!
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| And it's out! |
