October 25,- 31 2016
The Neatest Little Paper Ever Read®
Issue 00293
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Surprisingly, there’s actually a lot to admire about the lowly cockroach. Come along with Tidbits as we step on them anyway.
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A SUCCESS STORY In Spanish, “cuco” or “cuca” means caterpillar, and “acha” means “contemptible” which combine to form “cucaracha,” or cockroach. According to the book “The Compleat Cockroach” by David Gordon, this widely reviled insect is one of the most successful species ever to walk the earth. Roaches first appeared on the scene some 340 million years ago, which was 180 million years before dinosaurs appeared; 200 million years before flowers, seeds, nuts, and pollen showed up on Earth; and some 338 million years before Homo erectus began walking around. Except for minor adaptations, their design has remained nearly unchanged throughout the eons. There are about 3,500 species of cockroach, though scientists are still discovering new ones. About 50 types of roach are considered to be domestic pests. Of those 50, only five show up regularly in American homes, and all five of those are not native to the U.S. but were imported accidentally. Unlike flies and mosquitoes, cockroaches are not known to spread disease.
A PLANETARY PEST • Warm climates and tropical countries are home to the most species of cockroach. Cold places have the least. Florida is the roach capital of the U.S. with 27 different species, and Texas comes in second with 15. Compare this to Costa Rica with over 150 kinds. Most of Canada is roach-free,
Q: Doctor, I got beat up by a six-foot cockroach! A: Yes, there’s a nasty bug going around!
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1. LANGUAGE: What is the meaning of the Greek prefix “xeno”? 2. GEOGRAPHY: Gotland Island is located in what body of water? 3. MEASUREMENTS: What does a micron measure? 4. MOVIES: Who was the Oscar-winning director of the movie “Deer Hunter”? 5. LITERATURE: In which U.S. state was the writer Eudora Welty born? 6. MUSIC: Who wrote the song “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”? 7. MOVIES: What movie featured the line, “Hasta la vista, baby”? 8. PSYCHOLOGY: What is a fear of books called?
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with the exception of some large metropolitan areas. The states of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming have no native species of roach. According to records kept by the makers of cockroach control products, people who live in Los Angeles buy the most insecticides, followed by New York City, Houston, Miami, and Dallas. Roaches live in volcanic steam vents of Alaska 2,000 feet (610 m) underground, and in coal mines in England. In 1969 a worker preparing the Apollo XII command module Yankee Clipper for liftoff saw one inside the capsule. No one ever knew what became of the bug. It might have traveled all the way to the Moon. One of the largest roach species comes from Colombia and is just under 4 inches (10 cm) long. The heaviest comes from Australia and weighs about as much as an AA battery. One of the smallest species is about the size of half a peppercorn and it lives alongside social insects such as ants, bees, wasps, and termites, living off their food stores evidently in exchange for keeping the area clean. THE HEADLESS WONDER The cockroach has a collection of nerve cells resembling a primitive brain in its head and also in its tail. The two nerve centers are connected and help the insect react quickly when disturbed. However, they are able to operate separately from each other. Because of
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9. HISTORY: Who was the first U.S. astronaut to fly into space twice? 10. FOOD & DRINK: What food is eaten traditionally in the United Kingdom on the day before Ash Wednesday? Answers 1. Foreigner or stranger 2. Baltic Sea 3. Length 4. Michael Cimino 5. Mississippi 6. Burt Bacharach and Hal David 7. “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” 8. Bibliophobia 9. Gus Grissom 10. Pancakes (c) 2016 King Features Synd., Inc.
this, cockroaches can live for weeks after being decapitated, eventually dying of dehydration or starvation. • One scientist suspended cockroaches over a salt solution. If a roach extended its leg it would get wet, which completed an electrical circuit, delivering a shock to the bug. It took the cockroaches about half an hour to learn to keep their legs up to avoid the shock. The researcher then tried the experiment using decapitated cockroaches and found they were able to learn just as quickly. • A test performed in 1957 showed that female roaches with access to water but no food
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® Since 1991 the Department of Entomology at Purdue has hosted cockroach races around a circular track. Contestants are chosen from the school’s own research stock and some 7,000 fans watch the races. Betting is permitted. The track is a “two-furshort” race (as opposed to two-furlong) and the stadium is dubbed “Roachill Downs.”
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1. Humans need an atmosphere with 10%oxygen. How much oxygen do roaches need? 2. How often do roaches fart? 3. How fast can roaches run? 4. All roaches run from light, but what else do they universally avoid? 5. How long can a roach hold its breath?
could live 42 days before dying of starvation. Those given no food and no water lived two to three weeks. Thus, they are ideally suited for travelling and can be shut up for long periods of time while being accidentally shipped from one area of the world to another, whether it’s in a soldier’s duffel bag, a ship full of timber, or a truckload of produce. LOVE AND MARRIAGE • To attract a mate, a female roach will flex her legs, lift her wings, and emit a chemical “perfume” called a pheromone that can be detected by a male roach up to 33 feet (10 m) away. When the male approaches, the two seem to do a bit of fencing with their antennae. • In the majority of roach species, mating encounters are casual and the female later drops her egg case in a safe location and abandons it. But the story is different with the brown-hooded wood cockroach, which inhabits the Atlantic coastline from New York to Georgia. They mate for life. Together the male and female chew into wood making a series of small chambers where they live with their family for the rest of their lives. About a year after the male and female bond, their first offspring are born and both parents tend the young. Families usually consist of less than half a dozen youngsters. The families stick together for three or four years while the young mature. COCKROACH LANGUAGE • Cockroaches are able to make noises in the same way crickets and katydids do, by rubbing body parts together. The sound is similar to running a finger over the teeth of a comb. They are also able to emit a squeak when captured which is loud enough to sometimes startle the predator into dropping them. The Madagascar hissing cockroach when disturbed expels air from its abdomen producing a noise that can be heard 12 feet (3.6 m) away. KILLING COCKROACHES • 400 rads of radiation can kill a human — but it takes 3,200 rads to kill a cockroach, and some can survive 10,000 rads. That means that some cockroaches survived Hiroshima. So how can you eradicate a roach? Through chemical warfare. One of the cheapest and most reliable methods of roach control is powdered boric acid. Boric acid is commonly used as an eyewash and is available at any drug store. It’s also called Borax and found in the laundry aisle of the supermarket. Roaches that walk through this will groom themselves, ingesting the powder which collects in their gut, eventually killing them. • Spray a roach with Raid and a chemical dissolves the creature’s exoskeleton, a truly horrible way to die. • The labs at the S. C. Johnson Corp. breed and
raise around 80,000 roaches each week for the express purpose of finding new ways to kill them. The company manufactures insecticides such as Raid, so a full-time staff works to provide experimental victims. • When a recipe for controlling roaches appeared in a “Hints from Heloise” article in 1982, the editors of the column were swamped with over 40,000 requests for copies. • Roaches provide food for various animals that prey on roaches, supplying three times as much
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BASEDTUTS These are located in a cockroach’s feet.
protein as chicken meat. Amazing Animals
WORMS
• Worldwide, there are about 6,000 species of worms. Of those, 180 live in North America. A third of those are invasive species, including the popular night crawler. • In areas that were covered by glaciers during the last ice age, all worm life was eliminated. When the glaciers melted, the northern forests evolved in an ecosystem devoid of worms. When worms were introduced, either by wellmeaning gardeners, as ballast in ships, or in root balls of imported plants, the ecological balance was thrown off. • Worms eat and digest duff, the slowly rotting top layer of dead leaves that the trees depend on, making nutrients harder for the tree to acquire. When the duff has been digested, all that remains is the hardened soil layer underneath which sapling tree roots cannot penetrate. Insects and other small creatures whose lifecycles revolve around duff are stressed by the loss. Worm holes allow rainwater to flow away faster instead of retaining the moisture. In some places, oak forests were subsequently overrun by buckthorn and barberry due to the arrival of the worms and the loss of the duff. • In other areas where glaciation did not scrape the soil away and kill off all worms, worms evolved along with the ecosystem. In these places they provide invaluable services: they “plow” the soil, loosening it and creating channels where tree roots can grow, where oxygen can flow, and where water can percolate. They mix nutrients in, making the soil more fertile. Worm poop, called “castings” has a higher level of nutrients than normal dirt. • Aristotle called worms “the intestines of the earth.” Even Cleopatra recognized the value of earthworms and declared them to be sacred.
• Worms are hermaphrodites, meaning they can be either male or females, yet they still need another worm to mate. • Every earthworm has a band that looks like a collar encircling its body. After the worm mates, the ring hardens, and the worm crawls out of it. As it is crawling through the ring, the worm deposits eggs and sperm inside the ring, which then falls off. The ends of the ring are sealed off and the ring turns into a cocoon for the developing worm babies which emerge, fully formed but very tiny, several weeks later. • Worms come to the surface during heavy rains because the damp earth facilitates movement and makes it easier to find a mate. • A robin can eat up to 14 feet (4 m) worth of worms in a day. • The largest earthworm ever found was in South Africa and measured 22 feet (6.7 m) long. • The maximum lifespan of an earthworm in captivity is about six years. • There are over 1 million earthworms in one acre of soil. • They can burrow up to 15 feet (4.5 m) below ground. • Earthworms are 82% protein. T-bone steak is only 32% protein. Worms are high in omega-3 fats. • Earthworms have no lungs. They breathe through their skin. • Composting with worms occurs four times
faster than normal composting. • Charles Darwin, who studied earthworms extensively, said, “It may be doubted that there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world as have these lowly organized creatures.” LOTTERIES • Augustus Caesar held the first known lottery, to raise funds to repair Rome. • In 1851 in France, the French government needed money to sustain itself. Recent reports of gold strikes in California resulted in an idea. A national lottery was announced throughout France. Tickets sold for one franc each, and the prizes were solid gold ingots. The proceeds from this lottery were to be used to ship 5,000 fine French citizens to California in order to give them a new start in life. The lottery was rigged so that the gold never left the royal treasury. And instead of shipping 5,000 of Frances’s best citizenry, they instead loaded up the ships with
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1. In a study, which food attracted the most roaches? 2. Which food attracted the fewest roaches?
“A cockroach likely has no less brainpower than a butterfly, but we’re quicker to deny it consciousness because it’s a species we dislike.” -Jeffrey Kluger
prisoners, prostitutes, and thieves— anyone they most desired to get rid of. • Claude Monet won the French lottery in 1891. His winnings permitted him to devote himself painting. He became one of the most famous painters of the century. • Lotteries in the U.S. date back to the 1600s. The new English colony of Jamestown was
financed by a lottery in 1612. The first lottery sponsored by Congress was approved in 1776. The Mountain Road Lottery was sponsored by George Washington to fund a road over the Allegheny Mountains. Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania all sponsored lotteries. The Continental Congress raised over $1 million in 1776 for the Revolutionary Army.
• Every major religion (except the Quakers) established lotteries at some time in the early 1800s. Over 300 schools and universities and hundreds of transportation projects were benefactors of early lotteries. • After several scandals associated with lotteries took away the public’s trust and led to national prohibition of the games, Congress basically
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* I use an empty hardplastic travel container originally used for wet wipes to hold my coupons. It keeps them organized as I walk through the store, and its surface is great for writing on. -- I.L. in
Arkansas * “When cleaning out my storage and clutter areas, I ask myself one question, and it usually helps me clear out a lot of otherwise unusable stuff : Am I really likely to dig this out (or even remember that I have it), or am I more likely to buy or borrow a new one?” -- M.E. in Maine * Got leftovers? Try throwing chopped leftovers into a tortilla for a “leftoverrito.” Or make soup with remains from the produce drawer before it goes bad. Fried rice also works as a delicious delivery vehicle for leftover veggies and meats. * Want to save some money on your electric bill? Here’s two things you can do. First, plug your electronic devices into power strips and turn the strips off when you’re done using them for the day. Then replace the five most-used light bulbs in your house with ENERGY STAR certified bulbs. They cost a little bit more, but last way longer and use a fraction of the energy, saving you dollars! * Here’s another great tip to save money on utilities from A.E. in New Hampshire: Buy a hot water tank blanket (insulation) and you will save on your utilities because once the water is heated, it will not have to be reheated again and again. The blanket keeps it from losing heat when it’s cold out. * Make your own portable cleaning wipes. Mix together 1 1/2 cups of water, 1/2 cup alcohol and 1/2 cup white vinegar. Stack sturdy napkins or paper towels inside a gallon-size, resealable plastic bag, and add the liquid to soak. Seal and use as you would a packet of glass wipes. They can be used on hands, but not near the eyes. Send your tips to Now Here’s a Tip, 628 Virginia Drive, Orlando, FL 32803. (c) 2016 King Features Synd., Inc.
A Chicken in Every Pot! I’m not running for elected office -- but if I was, this is the dish I’d be sharing on the campaign trail. It would ensure a landslide victory for me for sure!
CHICKEN SPAGHETTI 1/4 cup finely chopped onion 1 full cup diced cooked chicken breast 1/2 cup (one 2.5-ounce jar) sliced mushrooms, drained 1/4 cup sliced ripe olives 1 3/4 cups (one 15-ounce can) Italian stewed tomatoes, undrained 1 (10 3/4-ounce) can reduced-fat cream of chicken soup 2 cups hot cooked spaghetti, rinsed and drained 1/4 cup grated reduced-fat Parmesan cheese 1. In a large skillet sprayed with olive oil-flavored cooking spray, saute onion for 5 minutes or just until tender. Add chicken, mushrooms, olives, stewed tomatoes and chicken soup. Mix well to combine. Stir in spaghetti. Lower heat and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. 2. When serving, top each dish with 1 tablespoon Parmesan cheese. Serves 4 (1 1/2 cups each). * Each serving equals: 264 Calories, 4g Fat, 20g Protein, 37g Carb., 816mg Sodium, 4g Fiber; Diabetic Exchanges: 2 Meat, 1 1/2 Starch, 1 Vegetable. (c) 2016 King Features Synd., Inc.
outlawed lotteries in 1894, and they weren’t revived until New Hampshire held one in 1964. • The biggest tip ever: Phyllis Penzo was a waitress at Sal’s Pizzeria in Dobbs Ferry, New York. One night in while waiting on police detective Robert Cunningham, she was offered her choice of either a meager tip, or half of the winnings from a lottery ticket he had just bought. She choose the latter. The ticket was worth over $6 million, and Mr. Cunningham made good on his offer for a tip. • Upon learning that he had won the Illinois state lottery for about $2.3 million, Harold Collins of Pekin, Illinois, gave all of his winnings to his former wife. He once promised that he would win her a million dollars. “Besides,” he said, “I like to work. I like the way I live. I like to watch sports on TV. My God, what could I have possibly done with almost $2.5 million? I don’t need it.”
• Joan Campaign of Australia found a wallet containing $225 in 1978. She turned it over the police. The owner rewarded her with a single lottery ticket. The ticket was a winner and Joan ended up with a car, a boat, a trailer, and a mobile home, worth an estimated $45,000. • When Herbert Chun of Australia won a lottery prize of $70,000 he became so excited at the news that he had a heart attack. • Clarence Kinder was 77 when he won $50,000 in the West Virginia state lottery in 1987. He died of a heart attack the next day. • John Batt was out of the country and missed the one-year deadline for claiming his $50,000 lottery winnings in the New Jersey State Lottery by a mere three days. • An inventor in Richland, Washington, came up with a hand-held machine that generated random numbers that people could use to play the lottery. He didn’t make any guarantee about whether or not the numbers would be winners. It just spared the lottery players from having to think up their own numbers.
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by Samantha Weaver * It was Bulgarian-French philosopher Tzvetan Todorov who made the following sage observation: “We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found.” * As Halloween approaches, it’s interesting to note that in 16 states, you won’t pay taxes on the candy you buy for trick-or-treaters; for tax purposes, candy is categorized as groceries. Of course, there’s room for debate over what qualifies as candy; breath mints and gum are usually included, along with the obvious -- chocolate bars, hard candies and such. The tax code can get even more detailed than that, though; for instance, in Florida (which taxes candy but not groceries), marshmallows are tax-exempt, but marshmallow candies are not. * The seahorse is the only animal whose head is positioned at a right angle to its body. * Recently retired sportscaster Vin Scully served 67 seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the Dodgers -- starting in Brooklyn in 1950, then moving with the team to Los Angeles in 1958 -making him the longest-tenured broadcaster with with a single team in the history of professional sports. Over the years he’s had many fans, including Chris Carter, creator of the longrunning TV series “The X Files.” One of the main characters, Dana Scully (played by actress Gillian Anderson), was named for the sportscaster. * In William Shakespeare’s day, the sound of thunder often was described as a “rouncerobble-hobble.” *** Thought for the Day: “Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.” -- Ambrose Bierce (c) 2016 King Features Synd., Inc.
The VJH Auxiliary Gift Shop has a great selection of Fall/Winter Tops, Ponchos, Capes, Hats and Gloves. Add style to any outfit with a lovely accent piece of jewellery or one of our scarves. We have cute Baby Wear and Cuddly Stuffies too. The Shop is totally run by auxiliary volunteers and all of our profit goes for needed hospital equipment and patient comfort. Thank you for your continued support.
BOOK WAREHOUSE #35, Alpine Centre 100 Kal Lake Road OPEN on WEDNESDAYS and SATURDAYS 9 AM TO NOON Quality used books & more, most priced $1 or less. Supporting Special Olympics, Vernon & other local charities. Phone 250-275-2676
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All your sharpening needs, and for your convenience, drop off and pickup at Vernon’s Water Store. 180, 4400 - 32 St (250)308-4866
Smartview Exteriors Providing Quality Service Since 2005 Special 20% Off Smart Energy Vinyl Windows and Doors Free Estimates Call Stan 250-317-4437 smartviewexteriors.ca
Wanted: Purchasing old Canadian & American coin collections & accumulations. Old gold & sterling! Private, Prompt & confidential. 250-548-3670 (Shuswap) Senior Hobbiest Buying Guns (250) 832-2982
Birch Firewood for sale 14”, 16” & 20” $200 per cord plus delivery. Free delivery in Cherryville. Or you can pick up. (Cherryville) 250-547-6747
1. Roaches can survive in 1.5% oxygen. 2. Roaches fart about once every 15 minutes. 3. Roaches can run up to 3.4 mph (5.5 kph) 4. Roaches avoid not only light but also moving air. 5. A roach can hold its breath for up to 30 minutes.
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1. Sticky cinnamon buns attracted the most roaches. 2. Celery attracted the fewest roaches.
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