Monday, January 16, approximately 9:30 am
A lazy holiday morning, I allowed myself to sleep in. Around 9:30 am, I dragged myself out of bed and went to the kitchen to have breakfast. I checked the fridge and found that Hubby had eaten the last of the cereal, so I went to the pantry and grabbed a new box.

As I poured myself a bowl of cereal, I noticed something curious: the cereal in my bowl did not contain any dried fruit. The cereal was supposed to include blueberries and strawberries, but all I saw were flakes. Thinking that perhaps the fruit had settled to the bottom of the bag, I extracted the bag from the box and found that it was absolutely devoid of any color except for a smattering of black sediment on the bottom of the bag, which I deduced to be blueberry particles of some sort.

I harrumphed to myself, annoyed that they had gypped me out of a good box of cereal.

Eyeing the cereal in the bowl, I pondered whether to eat it. Sans the fruit, it’d be like eating a bowl of Wheaties, I thought. But the lack of fruit was rather curious, so I decided against it. I poured the cereal back into the box, closed it up and left it on the counter. I considered taking it back to the store for a refund, or at the very least I wanted to show Hubby the oddity before throwing it away.

Luckily, I had another box of cereal in the pantry, so I opened it and was pleased to see that this box contained a generous amount of fruit.

Some time later…

I passed by the box of cereal on the counter and noticed bugs emerging from it. Larvae-like creatures, slithering and crawling, making their great escape from their hiding place into my kitchen. Utterly disgusted, the box was immediately transported to the dumpster outside. It took me a while to get rid of the uji feeling, knowing that I came very close to eating that bug-infested cereal.

When Hubby came home, I reported the entire story in detail. He was fascinated. “You should have taken it back to the store,” he told me.

“There were bugs crawling out of it! I was so disgusted, I had to get it out of the house before it infested the place! There’s no way that I was going to take that thing anywhere except the trash.”

“Well, you should’ve at least taken a picture before you threw it away,” he said. “You could have posted it on your blog.”

That’s Hubby, always thinking.

Before tossing it, I did notice that the “best before” date was April 2006, so it wasn’t old stock — just protein-packed. Needless to say, I haven’t eaten cold cereal since then. I’ve been eating oatmeal. At least the hot water should kill the bugs before I eat them.

Inspired to share this story by Booyahman’s similar tale.

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