Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries

And sometimes those cherries are full of WORMS!!

Dude!  No joke.

I had grand plans for making some cherry chocolate ice cream today with cherries from my yard.  I was using the recipe for burnt almost fudge ice cream my mom gave me and was just going to substitute cherries in for the almonds.  So I made the chocolate syrup this morning and put it in the fridge to chill while I did some other things.  This afternoon while the kids napped I pulled out a knife and started to pit my lovely cherries.  In the very first one I cut into there was a worm!

A nasty, writhing, white, mealy worm!  It almost looked like a weevil.

I stifled a scream and actually threw up in my mouth a little.

I hurled it out and picked up another cherry.  Looking it over beforehand I noticed a tiny little hole near the bottom and, sure enough, when I cut into it there was another beastly, little worm.  Looking at each cherry before cutting into it I noticed the vast majority of them had these little burrow holes.  I continued looking for anything remotely safe looking and even then, when cutting in, I still sometimes found little  worms hiding out enjoying MY cherries.

While picking I hadn’t really looked for holes like this and just tossed them all together.  Then, once they were in the bowl, I paid a little more attention before popping them in my mouth or giving them to my kids.  Still, I’m utterly revolted at the thought that I might have eaten some of these nasty, little things and not even known it because there were no tell tale signs!

Ew!  Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, EW!  The very thought makes me want to vomit.

I can’t get rid of the heebie jeebies.  I just so disgusted.  I don’t even dare use the few I found that look safe and are without worms because you just never know.  I’m also wondering if I just opened the floodgates for these worms by piling so many cherries into a big bowl all at once.  Like I made their job of going from cherry to cherry that much easier because they didn’t have branches in the way and were better able to infest the rest of the batch.  I’d swear there weren’t as many cherries with holes on Monday when I picked them and at least we haven’t eaten many in the last couple of days.  I still can’t get over how gross this is!

I ended up taking the entire bowl of cherries and dumping it outside (I certainly don’t want them making a happy little home in my brand new big outdoor garbage can) only to find my next worm fear confirmed.  Quite a few worm had crawled OUT of cherries and were clinging to the inside of the bowl!  It’s one of my favorite bowls so with a big gasp followed by a small scream I hastily flung it to the ground carefully placed it on the ground and ran for the garden hose to spray the vile little things out.  I was unwilling to let the worm infested cherries rest on my kitchen table long enough to get a photograph but I did buck up and get a picture of them underwater in the bowl before pouring them out into the yard.

Words cannot express how completely grossed out I am.  I wonder how long it will be before I feel confident eating a cherry again.  Ew.