Is Your Body Bugging You?

Know any clean freaks? Well, we’ve got something that would send them to store for masks, gloves and sterile clothing. A book is hitting the marketplace this month that details all the bugs that invade our bodies. Although we know some fourth-grade boys who would relish this disgusting stuff, most of us would be appalled to learn about the creatures that drink our blood, eat our cells and infest our muscles. But “Fearsome Fauna: A Field Guide to the Creatures That Live in You” (W.H. Freeman & Co.) tells about all that and more. Here’s a little nugget from author Roger M. Knutson, a biology professor, to get you squirming: A 3-to 4-foot Guinea worm can travel around inside your body up to a year without being recognized as foreign and killed off by the immune system. The last chapter deals with tips to avoid the loathsome beasts. It’s not reassuring. Here’s tip No. 5: Be lucky.