Long, agonizing life, in the kitchen
*
I know, you thought this was going to be about the laments of a housewife. But no, not yet.
I just went to the kitchen and found a
Triatoma on the wall. In case you are wondering wtf a
Triatoma is, they all kind of look like this one, the
Triatoma infenstans,*which is the whole point of this post:
He likes to drink blood... well who doesn't. But this guy won't stop until he is full, and I mean FULL
Also, while it is drinking blood, it will shit all over your face. It's true! This bug's popular name in portuguese is Barbeiro, barber... it particularly likes to bite the face... and leave you little presents in it.
So, I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Chagas disease. It was discovered and documented by a brazilian*scientist (see? we contribute!), and is caused by this cool flagelated protozoa called
Trypanosoma cruzi. Bored yet?
So yeah, the cruzi is in shit. And so are you, because you'll scratch where the bug bit you, and put the protozoa right in contact with your bloodstream.
Chagas disease has no cure, and what eventually happens in the chronic stages is chagastic carditis, or*in other words, your heart gets SO BIG IT*CRUSHES YOUR INSIDES (it actually just causes heart failure for most cases, but that doesn't sound nearly as cool). I couldn't find a picture of an actual heart, but I guess this is ok for showing the dimentions:
Yes. That big white area all over the person's chest. It*is a heart.
I probably shouldn't go on about how the protozoa does this to the heart, right? You're probably drooling all over your keyboard by now...
Anyway, when I saw the
Triatoma in the kitcken, I didn't think twice, I burned the little bastard, which*was probably a bad idea, as the smell was very sweet and bitter and buggy, and very enduring :/
.. Now that I'm actually looking carefuly at it, though, I see that it's not a
T. infenstans it's some other kind... aww, the poor thing...