Unwelcome Lunch Guests

Our lunch time today started well enough. I handed out the kids plates, filled with food appropriate for kids at this noontime meal. But as a change, to be healthier, I decided not to hand out chips. Instead, I substituted them with crackers. The choice was regular plain salteens or fish crackers. Only they were not fish crackers, they were Chickadees from the dollar store. They weren’t bad as crackers go, but as cheese crackers, not so good but you can’t beat them for $1.

Anyhoo, everyone started in on their food. All seemed fine, until my youngest daughter caught sight of a bug on the table near her plate. My oldest son came to the rescue and dispatched the marauder with a Kleenex. An actual Kleenex, not different brand of tissue that we all call Kleenex. He scooped up the bug and deposited it in the trash can. I was quite proud of him for taking the initiative and for saving his little sister.

All was back to normal...So I thought. A minute or so after the sighting and disposing of the unwanted lunch guest, my other daughter cried out about something on her plate. I went over to observe the situation. There on her plate was a small,long, light tan bug slowly making its way across the expanse of the plate. The same species it appeared that was caught near my youngest daughter’s plate. On first inspection, I couldn’t understand where they had come from. Then I happened to look at her pile of saltine crackers. There perched on top were a platoon sized group of similar bugs. She cried out in horror.

I immediately threw their plates in the trash. My son who had the crackers from the dollar store was not infested. I then threw away the rest of the pack and box of the the crackers that were housing these foreign invaders. I checked in the closet and found no sign of any more.

I have had a similar experience with a tub of oatmeal. My wife had purchased it to use in a recipe and then forgot it. After an unknown length of time, we noticed some of the bugs on the shelf. When we started moving things out to get to the source, there they were. Flowing out of the tub of oatmeal.

I guess they are eggs inside of the oats and after being unattended for a while, they decided it was time to hatch. Needless to say, we keep our oats in the freezer now and haven’t had another incident. Now I think we will be putting our crackers in the freezer also...not really, just have to consume them before any bugs can hatch...unless they are in reality mini-Tribbles (see Trouble with Tribbles episode from the original Star Trek series).

In the end, I made them new plates of food but they skeptical of what was on their plates afterward. Hopefully we won’t have anymore unwanted lunch guests anytime soon.

***UPDATE***

My 7yr old daughter asked me if those bugs can get into KoolAid. She and my other kids were relieved to find out that they were not, in fact, in her drink.