The Lady and the Bug

An entomological adventure tale
by Stephen Drew, AIR staff

NEWS ITEM: “An Israeli woman swallowed a cockroach and then a fork she used to try to remove the insect from her throat. The winged cockroach jumped into the 32-year-old woman’s mouth as she was cleaning her home in a village in northern Israel this week… [a] surgeon at the Poria Hospital in Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, removed the fork with laparoscopic surgery, a minimally invasive procedure performed through a tiny incision on the patient’s abdomen.”
— from a wire service report by the Associated Press, July 10, 2003

There was a young woman who swallowed a roach.
No one knows why she swallowed the roach.

There was a young woman who swallowed a fork
That wriggled and jiggled when she applied torque.
She swallowed the fork to fish out a roach.
No one knows why she swallowed the roach.

There was an incision into a gal’s tummy
Occasioned by something that made her feel crummy.
She felt bad because she had swallowed a fork.
She swallowed the fork to fish out a roach.
No one knows why she swallowed the roach.

There was a winged cockroach who had some adventures
That started when he flew through some woman’s dentures,
And ended with him dissolved in gastric juice —
The doctors came too late to set the roach loose.
The doctors arrived when the woman felt crummy.
They drilled through her tummy to fish out a fork.
She swallowed the fork to fish out a roach.
No one knows why she swallowed the roach.

And no one knows what to make of these affairs,
And nobody really much cares.

BONUS: The traditional song "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly"

(YouTube link)

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The article above is republished with permission from the July-August 2003 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.


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