Well literally, yes. Also metaphorically. Or it least it feels that way. My latest column for Nature Chemistry is titled "Bug Bites," about the taste of bugs (and having a taste for bugs). It hatched while at my niece's wedding reception early in the summer. The crew of cousins got onto the topic from a conversation about cilantro (stink bugs taste like cilantro, as it happens), and then suggested I write about it.
As I was drafting the piece, I went downstairs to grab a second cup of tea from the carafe in the kitchen. I carried it upstairs, set it down on the desk, and got back to work. I absently-mindedly picked up the mug and noticed something off with the scent. It wasn't quite as floral as I expected. I peered into the cup to find a (dead) earwig bobbing about. Oh dear. Its alarm cocktail of dimethyl disulfide and dimethyl trisulfide had given my tea a mephitic edge.
I removed the unfortunate earwig, and drank the tea.
It seemed beyond coincidental that my tea should be bugged, was the universe listening in? I still can't figure out where it came from. I had rinsed the carafe with hot water before filling it with tea, and it had been tightly sealed. I had already had one cup of earwig-less tea in the mug. The sugar bowl is covered. Where did it come from?
I took a photo of the bugged tea and of the earwig I fished out, but it felt a bit too gross to illustrate this post. (I described it to Math Man over dinner who winced every time I said "mandible".) So the mug is my organic chemistry mug.
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