Is your body infested with botflies? Bacon can help.

Botflies are are a family of winged insects known for gestating their larvae inside the bodies of mammals like horses, deer, and the occasional human. Like most flies, botflies live incredibly short lives, but their brief life spans are the stuff of science fiction nightmares. After mating, female botflies track down other insects like mosquitoes or ticks and attach their freshly fertilized eggs to them. In a kinder, gentler world the story of the botfly would stop there with the bugs growing inside of another pest, but things get much worse.

Botfly eggs stay dormant until their host insect comes in contact with a larger, warm blooded host (like you), at which point they pop out of their eggs, burrow into the host’s skin, and anchor themselves to their flesh using a series of barbs that make them almost impossible to get out. As the growing larva leeches life out of its host’s bloodstream, large bumps that secrete pus develop where they first burrowed in. As if things weren’t bad enough, people unlucky enough to play host to botfly larvae can sometimes feel the parasite inside of themselves and see it squirming around though an opening in the bump that the bug uses to breathe through.