This bizarre modified existence continues until one day the dangling insect is sucked into the jaws of a beast. As a grazing cow plucks the occupied grass from the ground, it is oblivious to the zombie ant and its evil masters.
Once the fluke warriors have succeeded in entering this, their final quarry, they burst from their trojan ant and use their mighty tails to swim through the maze of organs. Eventually they arrive at the quiet suburbia of cow guts-- the bile duct-- where the well-traveled adults settle down and abandon their host-hopping ways. The lancet flukes live in quiet parasitic happiness within the wet tubing, and before long the little bundles of joy begin to arrive. The mothers' eggs are released into the bile duct, and they are whisked along through the cow's plumbing. Eventually they are deposited into the intestines, where the eggs hitch a ride out on the slow-moving train of digested grass fibers.
There, as the sun rises over the grassy pasture and
the light glints from the countless clinging drops of dew,
a single snail resolutely inches toward a mound of steaming
nourishment.
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