They should post warnings on envelope boxes...

I used to think that stories like the two below were just urban legends, y'know, the kind of stuff that gets unleashed on the internet just to stir people up. Now I don't think so anymore. I promise you that the following stories are true, real, and...a bit freaky. I've heard the following from two different people in the past few days, and I knew I had to share them:

Story #1:
A friend of mine helps build display booths for trade fairs, so several times a year he travels around the country and meets lots of people. It was at one of these trade fairs that he had to do business with a woman who seemed to have trouble speaking. She talked as though her mouth was numb or something, he said. She apologized to him for her speech problem, and told him that she had just had minor surgery on her tongue.

A few weeks before, she was sending out letters or billing and pulled out an old stack of envelopes and used them, accidentally cutting her tongue on one. Instead of healing, it swelled up within a few days to the point that she had to go to her doctor to get the infection and swelling down.

The doctor lanced the cut in her tongue, and out came dozens of tiny black spiders (yes, spiders). Apparently there were spider eggs on at least one of the envelopes she licked and they got into the fresh cut and hatched out. She showed my friend her tongue, and he said it was swollen with black stitches in it. He is still quite freaked out by this story (so am I, for that matter), especially since he heard the story firsthand and got to take a look at her tongue.

Story #2:
Another friend told me this one today: he was at his dentist's office a few years ago, and he was chatting sociably with one of the assistants. During their conversation, she told him about one of their patients who also cut her tongue on an envelope. She had similar swelling to the other lady's, and when the infected area was lanced, a bunch of very tiny roaches came running out. My friend said the dentist confirmed the story when he asked him about it.

I think I'm through with licking envelopes, old or new...for a very long time.