Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1901-06-27
AN INSECT PIRATE.
Bitter Strife is Continually Waged by
the Little FIeas.

Bitter Strife is Continually Wage6 by
the Little Fleas.
The flea possesses all the pill atical
instincts-thirst for blood, rapacity,
cruelty. He is, further, as ingenious
in devising tortures as he is untiring
in the torment of his victims.
The flea is built upon lines that
make him forever hungry. But his
continuous performance appetite is
far from being the oldest thing about
him. Proportionately to size he is
the Samson of the universe. If an
elephant had the same relative
strength he could come near to over
setting steel-framed sky-scraper.
A flea, wingless, with body out of
all proportion to his head, and all over
less than the sixteenth of an inch IN
length, will leap upon plane surface
more than yard. This, too, when
he has been Matched in hair or straw,
or sand, and never known what it was
to have full meal. More marvellous
still, he will spring perpendicularly
upward from one to two feet. Fancy
a man or boy standing fiat-footed and
all of sudden leaping over church
spire.
Wonderful things have been done
with fleas. They have been put into
gold collars and led to drag about
lengths of gold chain at least one
hundred times their own weight.
Further, an ingenious goldsmith back
in the leisurely seventeenth century
made coach and four in ivory and
gold, with coachman upon the box,
postillion and outriders, yet all so tiny
it was dragged by pair of fleas,
working in gold collars. They worked
under bell glass, and were exhibited
in London and Paris.
To fight like cats and dogs is the
synonym of continuing strife, but even
cats and dogs do not fight so bitterly
as cat feas and dog fleas. Oddly
enough, the cat fieas are bigger than
the dog fieas, so should be always
victors. But here as elsewhere con-
dition tells. If the cat fieas are lazy
and luxurious-fat they can never
grow-the small, lean, keen-beaked
dog fieas kill them out.
The combatants stand up to fight
quite like pair of prize-r ring orna-
ments. AS they have six legs they
have plenty to stand on and s..ii
spare a couple with which to belabor
each other. Upon neutral ground, as
floor or walk, the cat and dog fleas
keep the peace. But let one invade
litter or coat sacred to the other.
and there is straightway fight to a
hnish- Something even more curious
than this Unborn antipathy is that dog
fleas will not live upon a cat nor car
feas upon a dog.
FIeas lay eggs after the insect
manner, which hatch out tiny wrig-
glers very nearly invisible to the naked
eye, yet capable of feeding on mois-
ture and microbes-at least one
judges that to be the diet, since fieas
breed so largely in sand, hair. straw
and litter where other food is lacking
and after while spinning them
selves cocoons. The cocoons are no !
bigger than tiny grains of sand. but
under the microscope show as semi. |
translucent ovals beautifully banded
with pink and pearl. They are
formed upon top of the matrix, what |
ever 1t may be, where the sun or the !
light can strike them fair. Rain Just
at the Matching time often kins a |
whole brood of sandfleas.
A hea's beak is sharp and hard.
something like birds, only more
pointed. A fleabte is not poisonous. |
save and except in rare cases where a |
nea has previously been biting in
tected tissue. Certain French sci |
enusts have shown that both fieas,
and bedbugs could thus carry tuber-
cular infection. Further, rats and rat
neas are greatly dreaded as helping
to spread the fearful bubonic plague.
New York Sun.