Tensions can run high when living with roommates. Quibbles over dishes, the rent and utilities, and even questionable hygiene practices can inflame tempers and sabotage relationships, leaving passive-aggressive notes and broken homes in their wake. There are many ways of managing a good home life within a shared household of semi-strangers, but we’ll save that for another time in another column. This is about a roommate dispute gone totally to the worms.
In 1970, four housemates living in Quebec were in a spat over the rent. Specifically, one housemate, a post-graduate in the department of parasitology at MacDonald College, was significantly late on his share of the monthly dues. Tensions ran high, and the quarrels continued. In what sounds like a particularly acrimonious argument, the delinquent housemate made a seemingly outlandish threat: he would poison them with the same organisms that he experimented upon in his laboratory, with the pig parasite Ascarissuum. His threat was quickly dismissed and the roommate was summarily evicted.
