Morning journal and courier., 1891-09-17
DIET ON SPANISH FLIES.
once Eaten by Birds They are Longed
 for AfterWard.


 "Sou would scarcely suppose that bird which fattens itself on on insect that will raise blister on your flesh almost as quick as a coal of fire will would be much of 6 table luxury, would youF" inquired the learned grocer of Eight avenue, ss he hook ed a mackerel out of the kit for a consum- CT, says the New York Sun.
 "Few people up north ever heard of the bird, I guess, much less ever tasted one, but every one knows the Spanish fly. A fly blister used to be as common as collie, and some folks used to say that it was easy to loco any one if you could get him to eat anything that Spanish fly had been put into. But maybe you don't know what it is to loco any one. Well, the old darkey hodoo doctors of the south will tell you that if you want to make girl love you all you have to do is to put some part of @ Spanish fly into an apple or ice cream or an oyster stew, or anything you treat her to, and then when she eats the fruit or the dish she'll be crazy after you. That's what they call being locoed. I don't know whether the Spanish fly will do that or not, but no one ever tasted one of these birds am speaking of without being crazy for them ever after, and they don't feed on anything except Spanish flies in the season when the bird is sought for food I don't say that people who eat them are locoed by the birds. but maybe they are.
 'tI never saw these birds anywhere ex- cept in southern Louisiana, but suppose they abound wherever the Spanish fly is plentiful. The bird is called the papsbote, and folks who know say it belongs to the blower family. It is of the size of the wood, cock, with sober gray plumsge and short, hard bill: The coming of the Spanish fly on the foliage in the localities that it fire quents is sudden and mysterious. Nobody knows whence it comes or whither it goes It disappears ss mysteriously as it comes It Is one of the most destructive insects that lives, as it comes in countless myriads and devours ravenously growing vegetable plants. The papabote comes with the fiy. remains until it disappears, and consumes untold millions of the insects. The birds grows so fat that they are just ball covered with feathers, and when they fall before the gun of the sportsman they invariably burst open, like overripe fruit.
 ''The hunter who goes out with his dog and his gun, though, with the expectation of filling his bag after the regulation me thods of the scientific gunner, will return without his game, for the papsbote is the shyest of birds, and can be approached within gunshot in only one way, for unlike all well known game birds, it will not crouch to the hunting dog. The bird is heavy to wing, and probably for that req son rises in flight long before the hunted is within range. It can be shot in no way considered sportsmanlike, but must be ap- preached by means of a horse and wagon The bird will permit horse to walk up close to it, and in open buggies or spring wagons the hunters ride about among the feeding grounds of the papabote, their guns lying across the laps, and they wing the birds as they rise on every side when the wagon has got nearer than the birds consider safe. The birds are considered such an incomparable delicacy among the epicures of Louisiana that small armies of men make great deal of money during the season by shooting papabotes for market. It is said that there is not a case on record of a person who has once tasted pspabote fattened on flies, who did not have an ir- resistible inclination for more"