Taking challenges to a whole new level is something but playing with your life for making it happen is another, a Florida man who ate dozens of roaches and worms
in an attempt to win a python snake has died from complications
stemming from the bugs he consumed during the unconventional contest.
Edward Archbold, 32, collapsed outside the Ben Siegel Reptile Store
in Deerfield Beach, Fla., after winning the first annual Midnight
Madness “Eat Bugs For Balls” contest, a bug-eating competition that
pitted 30 contestants against one another in effort to win a $700 Ivory
Ball python.
According to rules posted in an online forum,
the snake would be awarded to ‘the guy or gal that eats the most bugs
in four minutes without vomiting.” Archbold had apparently intended to sell the snake to a friend.
Video footage has surfaced on YouTube, detailing Archbold’s involvement in the contest.
While each finds the long-haired 32-year-old struggling to keep his
recent feed down, none show him keeling over or passing out.
Archbold’s cause of death death is not yet known — the Broward
Medical Examiner’s office has yet to release any type of autopsy — but
the shop owner insists it wasn’t the food. Discoid roaches, the unusual
creature Archbold consumed that night, are “eaten by people all over the
world,” Siegel told the Miami Herald.
“They’re clean — raised for exotic pet feed,” Siegel said. “We sell expensive animals, and these bugs are perfectly safe.”
An employee of the shop told the Herald that “customers or close friends will eat [the roaches] all the time as a dare.”
Edwin Lewis, an entomologist at the University of California at Davis, told the Herald that he believes an allergic reaction was the cause of death.
“It’s kind of gross, but if he chewed them up, they wouldn’t be doing
much to him,” he said. “It wouldn’t be any different than eating
shrimp.”
Sadly, no one is ready to take the blame for his death.
