There once was a swallow that flew into a man's mouth. Both of them were very shocked, naturally, and the man tried to spit the bird up, but it had lodged itself too deeply in the man's throat, so down it went.
"Huh," said the man, sitting down to think, if rather stupidly. "I wonder how I can get this poor fellow out. It must be unpleasant, swimming around in my stomach." The swallow, who could hear everything the man said, the stomach being an excellent conductor of sound, yelled:
"Ya think?" Unfortunately, skin has very little conductive ability, or the man had exceptionally poor hearing, so he didn't hear the swallow.
"I know!" cried the man. "I'll give myself the Heinrich manoeuvre." Inside his stomach, the swallow rolled its eyes. The man stood up and was about to start pushing up and in when his wife walked around the corner of the house and saw him with his hands on his stomach.
"What are you doing?" she asked. "Had some bad milk? Are you nauseous?"
"No," said the man. "I swallowed a swallow."
"Well, of course you swallowed a swallow," said the woman, as if to a six-year-old. "The thing that you swallow is the swallow, like a swallow of soup. Did it get to your brain, too, then?" The swallow snickered, wondering what it would be like to be soup.
"Maybe I should get myself to the doctor," said the man. "Or p'raps a surgeon. You're not making any sense." So the man got into his car and went to the hospital. As he sat in the waiting room, the swallow thought it might try to get out the man's stomach, so it started squirming upwards. This caused it to compress a nerve, which caused the man to go into convulsions. Several of the nurses screamed, but the more level-headed and experienced ones grabbed the man and wheeled him to a doctor once he had calmed down. The swallow sulked in the man's gastric juices.
"That's the last time I fly when I've got a bug in my eye. I don't deserve this."
When the doctor examined the man's brain, he couldn't find anything wrong (save for a somewhat underdeveloped frontal cortex, but he kept that to himself), so he asked the man if he had been experiencing anything else unusual.
"Well," said the man. "I swallowed a swallow."
"That's generally how swallowing works," replied the doctor. The man squinted.
"That's about what my wife said, I think. But, sir, I don't think the swallow wants to be there anymore."
"So, you're feeling nauseous?"
"Not me, though I'd imagine that poor bird might be, what with being rocked about by my convalescings."
"Convulsions," the doctor corrected absently. Then he paused for so long that the swallow wondered if another bout of epilepsy was in order. "What do you mean by 'poor bird'?" The doctor enunciated very carefully, looking a little confused.
"The swallow, sir," said the man. "Swallows are birds, ain't they?"
"You mean to tell me," said the doctor, still enunciating, "that you have a bird in your stomach?"
"Yessir. He was trying to get out when the conversions started."
"Convulsions."
"Conservations?"
"Con. Vul. Sions."
"'Tweren't no conversations, sir. I was shaking." Unbeknownst to the swallow, both it and the doctor expressed their exasperation at the same time; it by rolling its eyes and him by sighing.
"How did it get in?"
"It flew."
"Oh, for goodness sake," cried the swallow. "GET ME OUT!!!" The doctor jumped when he heard the bird.
"Right. We're going to have to prep for surgery."
"If the swallow just came down my throat like that," said the man. "Do you really need to cut me open? I was going to try the Hemlock manoeuvre when my wife stopped making sense."
"Heimlich."
"Hogwart."
"Never mind." The doctor shook his head. "Stand up." With one, firm motion, the doctor pressed upwards and inwards on the man's abdomen, and the swallow shot out of his mouth.
"This is highly irregular," said the doctor.
"You say that now, doctor," said the swallow, "but you didn't see what else was in there."
