Persian Pest?

Ugh . . .

The other night, while reaching for an Almond Biscuit from a plastic jar on my kitchen shelf, I noticed some small insects flying around in an adjacent jar, which contained about a handful of pistachio nuts. Though quite disconcerting at first sight, I was immensely relieved to see that the non-airtight fitting cover on the jar was keeping all the winged insects securely contained.

It flashed through my mind that as recent as the mid 1800's people still believed that the maggots they saw on decaying food were spontaneously generated. But that mistaken thought was proved wrong by Spallanzani, an Italian biologist. He showed that the maggots actually grew from eggs deposited by domestic flies.

And then my thoughts switched to Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president. I recalled that pistachios have long been a major Iranian export (though whether ours still come from there is doubtful). Nevertheless, some sardonic whimsy carried my thinking a bit further. What with his incessantly voiced threats to wipe out Israel, might he not be intrigued by the idea of exporting large quantities of infested Pistachios to Israel, where he would wish them to hatch and spread like a pestilence through the entire country? While I must admit this whole kooky idea was hatched in my head, if it were to generate in his, I’m sure he would seize on it and find some way to pursue it malevolently. But please, don’t any of you readers tell him you read this in The Horn!

Note: I did get rid of those insects, and in a way as to not risk their taking root here on this continent. I’ll leave it to you, to guess how I did it.

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