The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-10-18
Some Wild Bugs
That He Has Met
An Ancient Mariner Recalls Entomolog-
ical Experiences.

on your shoes and the uppers fall apart
from the soles and you we got nothing
but worthless leather strips to show fol-
your good pair of brogans.
'EHe likes horn buttons. just hang
up your coat with horn buttons in a
cabin where the cockroach is and next
morning you II find they've eaten all
the buttons up, right down to the
thread.
"'Why, know what the shippers do
when their boats get overrun with these
cockroaches? They go ahead and beach
/ her somewhere and open the seacocks.
/ The water floods the hold and the cabins
right up to the deck and you can see
/ those cockroaches floating off so thick
/ they look like tea grounds in pot.
| The ancient mariner paused to roll
another cigarette for his better ease of
nerves, then continued:
"Now you can t exactly call him a
bug, that clock down Venezuela
way; you can t call him a bug; but he IS
worse than any bug born. He's poison,
deadly poison.
t'The 4 clock lives only in Vene-
zuela; whenever they change the boun-
dairy line down there he moves back so
as to be always in Venezuela. He's
lizard, I guess you'd call him, and he
always lives in the same bush with a
tarantula. Find a tarantula and you III
find O. clock right next door.
"Well, sir, the strange thing about
these CLOCKS is that when they bite
you you always die at O'Clock. l
guess that's where they got their
names.
"Say YOU are bitten at II clock in
the morning; you II die at that after
noon. Or say you re bitten at 5 CLOCK
in the afternoon; you II hnger until 4
o clock next morning. There is abso.
lutely sure death about the A 'clock IS
bite and it IS sure death at just the
minute the hands of the clock point to
the figures II and 4.
81 got bit by a 4 clock once by
mistake and I tell you it was pretty
fierce Whats
ooh, no, of course I didn It; at five
minutes of 4 that afternoon / blew up
the bite with gunpowder and that saved
me. Ever have to blow up your leg
with gunpowder? Tt isn't nice.
"Now, that reminds me of the whale |
flea; IS strange bug when you stop |
and think about it. First time I saw |
a whale flea was up at Herschel Island,
off the north coast of Alaska. | thought /
it was a rat, he was so big.
"Of course you never find bugs on |
fish; but a whale ism t fish, you know,
so he 8 got bugs. This whale flea is
about as big as a rat, as l said, and
he Is got such strong hind legs he can
jump from one end of right or Green
land whale to the other in a little over
three jumps.
"The peculiar thing about this whale
flea is he IS got both gills and lungs.
When he tackles onto a big man whale
and the whale dives the flea just nat
nrally uses his gills like any fish; but
when the whale comes up to blow or
sleep all the feas ne s got work around
1n the upper deck and use their lungs
Tor breathing.
"Those whale heas certainly bother
whales terribly They have way of
catching on in the tender parts right
lnder his fippers and behind his ears
specially the ears of the mule cared
variety of Alaskan whale, which I must
iay is rare specimen-and they chew
light into the whales vitals. The
whales stand it as long as they can and
hen they take a desperate remedy to
id themselves of the pests.
They deliberately go up where the
ee foes are forming and get packed in
freezing foe There they stay, prac-
ically frozen in the ice, until the
whale 1eas, whose fur ism It so long as
t might be, die of exposure. I've seen
ce foes with dozens of these whale
leas frozen in about great cylindrical
pace where the whale had been
" And there s Just one more bug they
AVE in Japan which You might like to