Not up on your pest lore? Here’s something for the Raid warriors
Del Stone Jr. / Chat GPT
I have amazing news for you homeowners who may not be up on your pest lore.
This amazing information comes to us from the Allentown Morning Call, which is a newspaper with a strange name, almost as strange as Playground. Allentown is in Pennsylvania, where all the pests now hold respectable positions in the state legislature or the Mafia.
Amazing pest fact No. 1: Roaches move at 14.5 mph. This fact is both amazing and helpful, because now I know that I need only move at a speed of 15 mph to escape a roach, which will save me valuable effort because I usually move at a speed of 100 mph when escaping a roach.
Amazing pest fact No. 2: If you squash a yellow jacket, it releases a substance that attracts other yellow jackets, which apparently have signed a death pact with one another because they will sting any living thing within a 15-foot radius. If you stand 16 feet from the scene of the crime, whistle and look around as if you had no idea what was happening, the yellow jackets will only hold you for questioning.
Amazing pest fact No. 3: You can tell the temperature by counting the chirps of a cricket. All you do is count the chirps in 13 seconds, add 40, and you have the temperature. Isn’t that amazing! I must add that to my collection of other sophisticated weather forecasting techniques, such as: You can tell the wind direction by licking your finger and holding it up, or you can tell if it’s going to rain by washing your car;
Amazing pest fact No. 4: Rats can fall 30 feet without being hurt, jump 3 feet straight up, swim half a mile and climb up pipes 1½ to 4 inches in diameter. Sounds like we should scare up some of these rats and enter them in the Olympics. I’ll bet Michael Dukakis couldn’t do those things. And he wants to be president.
Amazing pest fact No. 5: A female mouse gives birth about 19 days after mating and can mate again in two days. Mice have about six young per litter and can produce six to 10 litters per year. The young are ready to reproduce in two months.
Obviously, if this were true, we would all be eating cheese and chewing toilet paper into little nest mounds. But man, due to his superior ability to do dumb things, has solved the mouse problem by inventing the concept of pet mice, which means the surplus mice are given to children to be mauled to death.
Amazing pest fact No. 6: The article says, “Although bats are hated and feared, they are beneficial.” Then it goes on to say how many mosquitoes a bat eats, blah blah blah. On paper, bats are fine. Pickled in a jar, even better. But the minute I see some screeching thing flapping at me out of the dark with leathery wings, beady rat-like eyes and a mouth full of teeth, I will assume it is not a friend of man and shoot it with the nearest large-bore elephant gun.
This column was published on Thursday, Sept. 8, 1988 in the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .