Ants in My Drink (Flop Friday #3)

Okay, here’s the thing: ants do not add extra flavor.

This flop comes from a few weeks ago when I visited Washington DC for a wedding.

At the reception after the wedding there was an open bar for beverages. A group of us, consisting of Caroline, Carolina, and Leo. Yes, I do realize that Caroline and Carolina are very similar names, but they have pretty different personalities. I also realize that this is Leo, the same person who was mentioned in the last Flop Friday post. 

It was Carolina’s idea to order Shirley Temples. She was the one who sparked the idea for the rest of us. This obviously made Carolina get her drink first. She was kind enough to sit and wait for us as we ordered our drinks, so she was standing off to the side, peacefully sipping her drink. 

This looks similar to what my drink looked like -- minus the ants, of course.

Courtesy of Chowhound

All of the sudden we heard Carolina gasp.

“Guys…,” we heard as the man handed us each our drinks. We all asked what was happening, but all she did was pull out her phone and turn the flashlight on. 

Again we heard her murmur something and then she showed us what she was talking about. 

Floating around in her drink were multiple mini ants. We were all shocked and checked our own drinks, and, sure enough, we all had them in our drinks as well. 

Carolina wanted to try again, so she handed back the drink. Unfortunately, her second Shirley Temple also had ants in it.

We felt bad enough for the guy who gave us our drinks already and didn't want to embarrass him once again, so we just left the guy with his other drinks and walked away. 

The second we left the room, I stealthily placed my drink on top of a table and walked away as we went back to the area we were sitting. Carolina was too shocked by the fact that she probably just ingested a few ants into her system because of her drink, so she was just holding the drink in her hand, not quite knowing what to do with it.

On the other hand, Leo and Caroline actually wanted this Shirley Temple pretty badly. Once we got back to our seating area, Leo attempted to drink the beverage very carefully, trying to avoid the ants. Caroline was immediately off to work with her miniature straw, picking out every single ant from her drink. 

This was an incredible sight to watch from my perspective. I had Leo to my left, looking into his Shirley Temple as if it was telling him the answer to the universe. To my right was Caroline, who had the most disgusted look on her face as she picked out the ants from her drink. Carolina was in front of me, with a blank expression on her face as she tried to process everything that had just happened. 

Eventually, Caroline got all of the ants out of her drink and finished off the beverage. Leo spent a half an hour with the process he was trying before he eventually gave up. Carolina had discarded of her drink long before Leo had, but we could all tell she was still shaken up about the ant fiasco.

Later on throughout the night, we went back to check what might have caused the ants to be in the drink. One of the first things we check gave us our answer. It was the sweet, red flavoring, called grenadine, that they put in Shirley Temple drinks. The juice in the bottle had an abundance of small ants floating around in the liquid, clearly confirming that the insects in our drink were due to that beverage.

After the mystery of the ant-filled drinks was solved, we carried on with our night, and celebrated the marriage of the happy couple's wedding we were attending.

I'm not sure what happened to Carolina or Caroline after they drank even just a little bit of their drinks, but, according to Leo, he had thrown up during the middle of the night after he had the drink. Whether or not the same thing happened to the other two girls, or if the reason Leo got sick even had to do with the ants in the drink, is unknown.

The next time I see someone make me a Shirley Temple, I am going to make sure that the grenadine they add to my drink doesn't have a family of ants floating inside of it. I don't want to relive that experience again.

Anyway, carry on.

xx Em