Tale of the Rice Krispie Treat

I felt inspired to recall the sad story of the Rice Krispie that occurred on a New Years Eve a couple of years ago...

*Warning: Don't read any further if you're eating something right now.*

It all started with a trip up to Sacramento to hang out with two Stanford friends, Megan and Linds. We were at Linds' house, which is actually in Elk Grove, just outside of Sac. She lives in a country-ish house...relative anyway. To put it in perspective, she has chickens and a goat in her backyard.

Anyway, so we returned to Linds' house from an evening of watching fireworks in Old Town when we decided we'd make dessert. Yummm..it's never too late for Rice Krispie treats, right? So, while they were busy preparing some other treats, I got out the marshmallows and the pot to melt the butter. No problems so far.

Linds places a couple of boxes of Rice Krispies on the counter and tells me that there should be enough in one of the boxes. I shake and then open one of the boxes and start pouring in the cereal, mixing in the cereal bits with the melted marshmallow and butter mixture. A few minutes later, I poured the entire sticky mass into a shallow dish.

A short while later, we sit at Linds' dining room table and I begin to cut into the Rice Krispie treats. I cut generous portions for each of us. We all begin to eat the treats, and they taste a little funny. Just stale and chewy, like the cereal was old, but nothing too unusual. I tell them there's a lot, so we should eat more. They chew them nervously. I eat two large Rice Krispie squares myself.

Linds gets up discretely and examines the cereal boxes she had handed me. She opens one of them and has a troubled look on her face, but hesitates saying anything. She walks back to the dish of Rice Krispie squares, and then says we should stop eating them. "Why," one of us asks.

She delays. "Uhhh, I think there are maggots in the Rice Krispie treats."

I don't want to look at the Rice Krispie dish too closely, because I don't want to see the maggot pieces intermingled throughout. But I'm also curious. I look at the dish a little more closely, and I think I see a tiny suspicious mass. Finally, Linds takes the whole tray and dumps it into a trash bag and throws away the cereal box away, too. I'm thinking in my head, "that explains the black specks that were in the Rice Krispie treats." (I thought it was just burned specks from the pan or something...wrong: poop or larvae or something).

Disgusted, we all brush our teeth and rinse out our mouths multiple times. When we're done, we sit in Linds' living room, too grossed out to do anything. Linds tells us that when she opened the cereal box, there were maggot webs hanging out the outside edges of the inside of the box. A lot of them. They are both wondering how I didn't notice that when I made the Rice Krispie treats. It was late? I was tired? I don't pay close attention to detail?

"I don't know," I said, "I just didn't look inside the box, and I didn't notice anything in particular because it all blended in with the marshmallow."