Just a Lil’ Bit

You may have seen her playing bingo at the local Y or strolling down Main St. in her pastel floral dresses and gaudy jewelry. But lately, this pillar of her community, mother, wife, and sister, Mrs. Trinket, has been spending all of her time in the Shoe County Hospital, suffering from a horrible malfunction of the newly approved jaw-replacement technology. Some may blame her, but she and her family certainly blame Jaws Inc. for its negligence.
“I… swallowed a fly,” Mrs. Trinket manages to wheeze out, her voice hoarse and her swollen body shrouded in sterile blue cloth, “I, I just don’t know why.”
Mr. Pock, her surgeon, specializing in animal removal, goes into more detail. “Since swallowing the seemingly harmless fly, Mrs. Trinket has swallowed a spider, a parakeet, a cat, and a dog named Lil’ Bit.”
Mr. Trinket remarks that when his wife swallowed the fly (it had been swimming in her Pulp-Free Tropicana orange juice), she went into a psychotic fit of terror. “She hates flies more than anything else; she was less upset when she fell off the lightning rod last year and broke her jaw,” her husband explains, alluding to the cause of Mrs. Trinket’s jaw problems in the first place, “She was running around the house screaming… so that was when I suggested she swallow a spider to catch the fly.”
Boi Trinket, their son, witnessed the whole fiasco. “Then my mom swallowed a spider. But,” he adds, “she just could not bear it jiggling and wiggling inside her. She decided to take matters into her own hands, reaching into her mouth to remove the bugs.” It was at this point that her synthetic jaw snapped, causing her mouth to expand to what doctors estimate to have been a radius of about six inches.
“The spider only wriggled and jiggled more,” explains Mr. Trinket. “Ferris, my son’s parakeet, took notice of this wondrous sight and flew into my wife’s expanded mouth, trying to catch the spider. Chaser, our tabby cat, is always chasing Ferris around the house, so he jumped in right after her.”
“I wish I had fed Ferris like I had promised,” says Boi, despairingly, “Then it wouldn’t have been starving enough to fly into ma’s mouth.”
It was at this point, when Mrs. Trinket had managed to swallow one fly, one spider, one parakeet, and one tabby cat, that Mr. Trinket, growing more anxious, called his neighbor, Mr. Blister, local fire chief, begging for help. Mr. Blister arrived with his trusty collie, Lil’ Bit. “Lil’ Bit’s solved all my problems in the past,” proclaims Mr. Blister, “so I figured this one would be a breeze.”
Lil’ Bit was released into Mrs. Trinket’s mouth, prying it open to about twice the size it was before. “That’s when Mrs. Trinket collapsed onto the floor!” exclaims Mr. Blister. “I drove her immediately to the hospital with my fire truck.”
Doctors explain that Mrs. Trinket’s stomach has started to digest Lil’ Bit while they work furiously to remove it. “The other animals shouldn’t be a problem. But Lil’ Bit is a lil’ bit too big,” Dr. Spock says, giggling guiltily. Then he becomes serious, “And collars are never easy.”
Jaws Inc. has issued a statement stating that their synthetic jaws will not snap nor expand under normal circumstances. They apologize for Mrs. Trinket’s injuries, but claim that there was nothing they could have done to prevent it.
Mrs. Trinket remains in critical condition at Shoe County Hospital, surrounded by flowers and gaudy jewelry sent from friends and relatives.