Two years ago, Oregon’s Abby Beckley made a discovery that ranks pretty highly in the most disgusting things that can possibly happen to you. After noticing significant irritation in her eye, Beckley pulled out what she believed to be an eyelash, but was in fact a live, wriggling worm, one of fourteen that was nestling in her eyeball.
While this definitely wasn’t cause for celebration for poor Abby, Richard Bradbury, team lead for the Parasite Diagnostics and Biology lab which released the story this week, is pretty excited about the discovery. “This is only the 11th time a person has been infected by eye worms in North America”, he told CNN. “But what was really exciting is that it is a new species that have never infected people before. It’s a cattle worm that somehow jumped into a human”. So not only did Abby have worms living in her eye, but a very rare species of worm that until now has only inhabited the eyes of cows. This woman does not have good luck.
Apparently, parasitic eye worms are quite common in animals, with dogs, cats, sheep, pigs and cattle frequently developing worm larvae via face flies that are attracted to their tears. More rarely, the same can happen to humans, but this tends to be limited to young children or the elderly living in poor, rural communities. Abby’s case, however, has shed new light on different species of parasites. “Through our work”, says Bradbury, “we were able to understand that a brand-new species can now infect people who are around cattle”. We don’t know about you, but we won’t be getting too close to any cows anytime soon.
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.