Trichobezoar

Show and Tell
Admiral Biscuit

Cheerilee kept her expression neutral as Snails returned to his seat, a small aquarium held in his teeth. Unsurprisingly, it contained a snail—a rosy wolfsnail, to be specific. Which was also nicknamed the cannibal snail, due to its diet of other, slower gastropods.

“Has anypony else brought something for show and tell?”

A pale grey hoof shot up.

“Nursery Rhyme?”

The filly nodded, and leaned down into her saddlebags, producing a brown paper bag. It wasn’t oozing or moving about, both which were good signs.

Is this going to be appropriate for class? Cheerilee thought about asking the question aloud, but she was certain that the filly had learned after a brief parent-teacher meeting. Admittedly, none of the ponies in her class had been overly scarred, and they had all learned an important lesson about why it was important to wash pasture grasses before eating them.

She trotted eagerly to the front of class and set the paper bag on Cheerliee’s desk, then unrolled the top and pulled out a greenish fuzzball.

For an instant, Cheerliee had a flashback to the parasprites, but this wasn’t a parasprite. It was just a ball of fuzz, no more, no less.

“This,” Nursery Rhyme said, holding it aloft so the whole class could see, “is a bezoar. Specifically a trichobezoar, which means it’s made out of hair.

“Some kinds of bezoar are made out of other things that get stuck inside the gastrointestinal tract, and once upon a time it was thought that the harder ones were an antidote against any poison and sometimes noble unicorns who got them would put them in their drinking goblets to protect them from jealous rivals.”

“Very interesting,” Cheerliee said. “Where did you get it?”

“Dad had to surgically remove it from a patient,” she said. “And she didn’t want to keep it, so Mom gave it to me.”

“So it came from inside a pony.”

“Well, yes. But it’s not like the worms!”

“Those were educational,” Cheerilee grudgingly admitted. “Does anypony have questions?”

Practically every hoof in the room shot up, and Cheerilee started choosing. “Sweetie Belle?”

“Is it like a hairball? Opal gets hairballs but she horks them up and when Rarity finds them she shrieks.”

“Yes, and it can be caused by ponies licking their own fur or chewing on their manes. Or other ponies’ manes. Some other predators get them, too, like owls, who can cough them back up. Ponies can’t.”

“Silver Spoon?”

“You said that ponies thought that bezoars would protect against poison—did any of them find out that they didn’t?”

Nursery Rhyme shrugged. “Ponies do all sorts of dumb things and find out that they don’t work.”

“Could you bespell a bezoar so it would be an antidote for poison?”

“Diamond Tiara, please wait to be called on.”

“Sorry, Miss Cheerilee.”

“Maybe? You’d have to ask an adult unicorn who’s good with enchantments.”

Apple Bloom raised her hoof, and Cheerliee called on her. “Lotsa zebra potions use natural ingredients, so maybe if a bezoar is used properly it would be an antidote to poison.”

“Bezoar stones do remove arsenic from solution,” Nursery Rhyme said. “But not right away, it takes a little while for it to work.”

Cheerilee looked over the class and the legion of upraised hooves. “Archer?”

“How did your Mom and Dad get it out?”

“Surgery—he made a small incision in the patient’s stomach, right here.” Nursery Rhyme pointed to her belly and traced a line with her hoof. “Then he had to cut open her stomach and pull it out, and sew her back up afterwards.”

“Eww.”

“I wouldn’t want a doctor to cut into me.”

“Sometimes that’s the only way,” Nursery Rhyme explained. “Oh, you can get them from swallowing gum, too.”

Bubblegum Brush slid down in her seat as several eyes turned in her direction.

Diamond leaned over to Silver Spoon and whispered none too quietly: “Her coat’s about the same color as the bezoar.”

“I heard that.” Bubblegum pointed to her stomach. “No stitches, it wasn’t me.”

“Key Lime’s kinda the same color, too.”

“It wasn’t anypony in class,” Cheerilee said, then turned to Nursery Rhyme for confirmation.

“It was an adult pony. She’s got trichophagia, which is where a pony compulsively eats hair. Nurse Snowheart is working with her, and she’s getting better.”

“Is that similar to pica?” Cheerilee didn’t raise her hoof before asking the question, but she was the teacher and didn’t have to.

“Sorta?” Nursery Rhyme shrugged. “It’s not exactly the same, I don’t think. I could ask Nurse Snowheart, she’d know.”

Cheerliee nodded, and looked back over the classroom. Plenty of ponies still had their hooves raised. “Lily Longsocks?”

“Is it soft?”

“Yeah.” Nursery Rhyme poked it with her hoof. “Like a ball of felted wool.”

“Can we touch it?”

Cheerilee looked at the trichobezoar uncertainly. “It’s not germy or anything, is it?”

“Not anymore, my Dad sterilized it twice—once after he pulled it out, and again after it had dried off. Mom wouldn’t have let me take it to class if it wasn’t safe.”

“She let you bring intestinal worms.”

“Those are safe as long as you don’t eat them or their eggs,” Nursery Rhyme countered. “And nopony was allowed to touch them, they stayed in the jar.”

“Well, then. Form one line, please.”

•••

Cheerilee didn’t like to invoke parent-teacher conferences unless there was little other choice. Fillies and colts were naturally curious, and they didn’t always make the best choices. Besides the obvious mantra of providing a book education, she also provided a social education, nurturing natural interests into a productive path.

And all the students had been interested in the trichobezoar, she had to admit. Apple Bloom might make a trip to Zecora’s hut to ask about them, for example.

She’d had no intention of bringing it up to Nurse Redheart or Dr. Stable, not until she ran into Redheart at the market.

After an obligatory exchanging of pleasantries, and a bit of praise for Nursery Rhyme’s significant improvement in Equestrian history—admittedly, largely focused on medical knowledge through the ages—she brought up the topic of the trichobezoar.

Nurse Redheart grinned. “When’s the next show-and-tell? We’ve got a whole collection at the hospital of things we’ve taken out of ponies.”

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