Done with David's

 Today I found a maggot inside a sunflower seed.

I've been on a sunflower seed kick for about a week.  They keep the mouth occupied, but you actually get to eat something, unlike gum.  Gum is a tease, to get your stomach acids bubbling away at your gastrointestinal lining.  Sunflower seeds come with the added satisfaction of something to swallow without risking a bezoar.

Parasites, in any form, are one thing I cannot stand.  They have always bothered me, and I lump most small, strange looking worms into that category.

Earlier I was reading an MSN feature about parasites, and bit into a sunflower seed with a sandy texture.  My imagination, in a feverish fit, dictated that I spit the seed out immediately.  I complied, and was relieved to see only blackish bits and chunks of shell.

"Phew", I thought.  Just a rotten seed.  Still gross, but preferable considering the alternative.

Later I resumed eating seeds, and again, felt that sandy texture.  Frustrated by the lack of quality in this bag of Davids(formerly a brand of utmost prestige in my mind), I spat this one out to find the seed halfway hollowed and containing a tiny maggot, surrounded by the familiar blackish bits.

He was dead, thankfully.  Cooked alive in the seed baker at the Davids plant, I imagine, braised with the juice of what I presume to be either his feces or his dead siblings; both theories are satisfying.

And so I reluctantly add sunflower seeds to my "Eat Carefully" list.  I have found worms of one kind or another in cherries, corn, blackberries, a dead mouse, and now David's sunflower seeds.  From this point on I expect everything to contain maggots; I will probably be surprised less often.

NOTE: Photo is a re-creation.  After the initial shock wore off, I dug through the trash to find him AND the seed he had previously been occupying, and pushed him snugly back into his burrow.

The offender

Evicted!