Well, now we know what happens when you swallow an AirPod
Someone still has to try eating Jabra and Samsung earbuds for a more complete picture
There are plenty of reasons why wireless earbuds can be kind of a pain. But we never considered that they could create a more literal kind of torment if you, like a guy from Worcester, Massachusetts named Bradford Gauthier, accidentally swallow one of the little bastards and end up with it lodged in your esophagus.
Gauthier, who lived to share his story of chowing down an AirPod, related his dread tale to The Guardian—perhaps to help others avoid the intimate listening experience he undertook. As he recalls, Gauthier had been shoveling snow late at night last February before turning in to watch The Thing on his phone before going to bed. He nodded off while it played and when he woke up later, he found one earbud but he couldn’t find the other. In retrospect, he thinks it was at this point that he might’ve swallowed the AirPod while yawning. Gauthier drank some water, noticed that his “throat filled with water, but it wouldn’t go down.” However, he was tired enough that he just went back to sleep.
In the morning, he noticed that one of his AirPods was gone. The location feature didn’t work because “the batteries were flat” but Gauthier wasn’t too worried—even after drinking water again and having more trouble swallowing. “I just thought my throat was unusually dry,” he remembers.