As further evidence that everything in Australia will kill you, an Australian teen has died after spending more than a year in a coma and being paralyzed for eight years after eating a slug that carried a worm that gave the kid rat lungworm disease, known by its much easier to say scientific name Angiostrongylus. The slug was carrying a worm that is usually harmless to the rats who east slugs but, to quote Pink Floyd, the worms ate into his brain, and he developed a form of meningitis called eosinophilic meningoencephalitis, which is usually not fatal. In this case, however, it was.
I mean, I feel sorry for the kid and his family, but maybe eating slugs you find crawling across your patio isn’t such a good idea.