According to the news, E. coli is trying to kill us yet again, much like Wile E Coyote repeatedly tries to kill the roadrunner, although the murderous E.Coli conceals itself within the romaine lettuces we consume rather than ensnaring us within some deadly but excessively convoluted contraption.
This stop-press bulletin is of particular concern to me, as romaine lettuce is a standard component of my daily lunch. Indeed, it is the leafy foundation upon which my entire midday meal is built. What I believed to be a bedrock of vitamins and minerals is actually a slimy, writhing mass of homicidal bacteria.
I well remember foraging and unwisely devouring wild mushrooms in my teens, being told the fungi I had found were probably poisonous, then curling up in an armchair for two days afterward expecting to be explosively sick at any moment. Nothing happened, however. In fact, I felt fine.
God proverbially looks after fools and drunks, of course, and his assistant Mother Nature apparently casts a watchful eye over toadstool pickers too. But it seems no such divine dispensation exists for commercially farmed lettuce packaged in plastic and sold in supermarkets. Which, perhaps, is as it should be. Trust the homegrown fruits of the Earth and not the genetically modified products of Big Agriculture as far as you can.
Death by lettuce must be a bewildering way to go. Queasy victims stagger away in the general direction of what they think is the bathroom, only to find themselves suddenly shuffling off this mortal coil instead. Alas, E. Coli is a far more successful bringer of doom than Wile E. Coyote this Thanksgiving.
