Spanish Fly

        A spanish fly could either refer to a cocktail or liquid drops meant to be added to a beverage to get the consumer to feel a little more amorous. Either way you take your on-the-path-to-date-rapey artificial horniness enhancers, there are some things you should know. A) they are named after a real life insect, B) the insect is known for causing men to get erections, and C) the erections are not pleasant and a spanish fly of any sort isn’t likely to have any real effects on women. 

“Non-pleasant erections?!” you say? “I don’t believe such nonsense!”. Spanish fly usually refers to an acid-like chemical called cantharidin that is found in several members of the blister beetle family (Spanish Fly is a beetle. Not a fly. I don’t know who names these things.) 

Dangit I should’ve said “spoiler alert”! Now I practically gave away the fact that the cantharidin found in these beetles causes blisters. Oh well. I can still ruin erections for everyone! If you manage to ingest this chemical you could fall victim to burning, inflamed urinary tract that can cause the whole penis to become erect. It’s no surprise considering that cantharidin has been used to remove warts and tattoos. This stuff means business. 

So if you happen to see an attractive, metallic green beetle wandering around DO NOT rub it on your junk. DO NOT grind it up and sprinkle it in your girlfriend’s drink. AND DO NOT stash it in your frenemy’s underwear drawer for a good laugh (wink wink). Seriously though - don’t. Too much cantharidin is fatal. It scores a .5 on the LD50 scale. 

The LD50 scale is used to score toxins by exactly how much it takes to be a “Lethal Dose” in “50%” of lab mice. it is measured in milligrams per Kilogram - as in how many milligrams it takes to kill a Kilogram of living thing. So a score of .5 means that about 10mg can kill an average adult. 

Okay - so it wouldn’t be that easy to get 10mg inside you by accident. But still - you don’t want a pain in your peehole. So just remember: Spanish Fly will not lead to a fun evening

What is Lurking in Your Christmas Tree?

Christmas trees were first chopped down in 18th century Germany only to pop back up in a festive living room decorated with apples, candy, and pastries just in time for the annual christmas celebration. Eventually candles were added to the mix to help illuminate the jolliness of the atmosphere. Glass baubles were blown, tinsel was strung, and with the advent of electricity, thousands of twinkling christmas lights were added as well. But something may be lurking in your tree that could dampen your yuletide feelings. Your tree could be crawling with insects and more!

Picture yourself shuffling past the tree one morning in your robe and slippers, coffee in hand, when you notice a strange little insect on the brim of your mug. Then one on your sleeve, one on the chair - you realize there are hundred of them everywhere! That’s because while you were hanging your stockings with care a female praying mantis was doing the same thing with her egg sac. In your tree. These unusual little insects are designed to ride out the cold winter on a tree limb. But when you bring that tree into a warm house you trick the eggs into thinking spring has come early and it’s time to emerge. 

Has your tree ever flocked itself? I admit, I had to look up what “flocking” meant in terms of Christmas trees. Flocking is when you spray weird artificial snow on your tree with an aerosol can. If your tree seems to be a self-flocker you probably have adelgids in your home. Adelgids are aphid-like creatures that suck tree juices and secrete a white cottony wax substance. You may also even see some true aphids that occur in huge numbers and resemble small spiders or mites. Not to fear, both of these little plant dwellers are specific to your tree and generally won’t leave, even if you have nearby houseplants.

Of course everyone’s biggest fear when bringing something from the outdoors inside is the looming threat of a stowaway spider. Christmas trees are no different as they provide a banquet of insects. Besides adult spiders, their egg sacs also overwinter on tree limbs. After hatching, a new population of young spiderlings have their choice of small insects to eat because the tree may also contain tiny insects known as scales, mites, and barklice. Also there’s also the liklihood that the spiders will branch out into your home, where they may not be dangerous to people, but can leave webs all over your floor, walls, and ceiling until springtime when they venture back outside. If they venture back outside.

It’s the nature of the world we live in that we will always be surrounded by insects and spiders. But you can do your best to not set off a pine-scented bomb of bugs in your living room. Before bringing a live tree indoors inspect it carefully and shake it within an inch of its life to get rid of any spiders, beetles, etc. Under no circumstances should you bring your tree into your living room and spray it with pesticides. Even if you find some insecticide that smells like candy cane and gingerbread - pesticides are flammable and if there’s one thing you don’t want to do it’s take a dying conifer, covered in electrical cords and blinking lights, and douse it with fuel. If you really want to be sure your home is insect-free you can always spare the live tree and buy a life-like artificial tree. Barklice don’t live on PVC twigs, afterall.

Bed Bugs: What To Do

Does your home have the faint, yet unexplainable scent of coriander lingering in the air? Do the seems of your mattress have unexplainable brown spots? Are you running irritatingly low on blood? If you answered yes to all of these then you could have bed bugs. 

To be perfectly honest I have no idea what coriander smells like exactly - but I do know what bed bugs smell like thanks to my experience feeding them as an undergraduate. My entomology lab had a large jar of them with a paper towel held over the top with a rubber band. To feed them you just hold the jar upside down over your forearm and feed them with your own blood. (And you thought you had it rough in college?) It’s alright because bed bugs don’t transmit any known diseases, so as long as I never scratched spots on my arm where they bit and gave myself an infection from who-knows-what under my fingernails. . .  I was fine.

What was i talking about?

Ah, yes. The bed bug/coriander smell. It’s hard to describe so I would say it’s a pleasant mix of grass and soap. I mean, bed bugs may be kind of dirty with the whole poop-all-over-your-mattress thing, but the aroma coming off their scent glands is not unpleasant at all. Others have compared the smell to scented wax or moldy raspberries.

No matter the smell, the fact is: no one wants bed bugs in their home because they suck your blood while you sleep and that is the creepiest thing I can imagine. So, if you have evidence of bedbugs in your home you might see the brown smudges, you might smell the coriander, but you will definitely have small red spots on your skin that forms a pattern. Usually the pattern is where your skins meets the mattress while you sleep. 

Obviously the best way to eliminate bed bugs from your home is to hire a professional extermination specialist. But if you’re determined to try it yourself and save a lot of money the best thing to do is follow these steps:

1. Strip your bed, placing all bedding into plastic bags, and vacuum seams and creases of mattress and box spring thoroughly.
2. Purchase bed-bug-proof encasements for your mattress and box spring. These are specially designed sacks with zippers that prevent bed bugs from entering or leaving your mattress. 
3. Wash all bedding and suspected clothing in hot water for 30 minutes followed by a 30 dryer cycle. (for non-washables you can also place items in a freezer for 72 hours)
4. If you need to treat other areas of the home go slowly and thoroughly over every piece of furniture, wash all clothes, seal all cracks and crevices. 
5. Be careful using pesticides. Chances are that they are more hazardous to you than they are to bed bugs. Diatomaceous earth is a good natural powder insecticide that will shrivel bed bugs into jerky without harming you or your pets.
6. Check your progress. It’s likely that you’ll have to go over your infestation with a fine-toothed comb more than once over the next several months. Interceptor cups can be purchased for the feet of your bed. Imagine four tiny bed bug moats. It’s satisfying to see how many you’ve thwarted and even more satisfying to watch that number go down each day.

Black Widow: WW2 Veterans

Not all U.S. war veterans are thought of as heroes. A few are considered downright villainous simply because they exist. The venom glistening off their fangs could play a small part in that though. Black widow spiders (Latrodectus spp.) were small yet important players during World War II, lending their biological nastiness to an army needing to be as deadly as possible. While Oppenheimer was scheming and Rosie was riveting the widows were hard at work on munitions. 

To truly be all you can be on the battlefield you need accuracy with your weapon and in the 1940s to be accurate you needed excellent crosshairs. Spider silk is unique in that it is incredibly strong, ultra-fine, and doesn’t break to pieces during the violent vibrations and kickbacks felt on the battlefield.

Some munitions factories kept arachnids on hand but many relied on civilians to farm silk from their black widow livestock. Silk farming entails rigging up a teeny tiny harness to strap down the spiders while you stimulate their nerve centers until they provide the necessary silk. When Nan Songer, a California housewife, decided to sell spider silk to the U.S. Bureau of Standards for $25 per 100 feet she strapped the widows to a block of yucca using hair pins. She would then tickle the spider’s spinnerets with a dissecting needle until they began producing silk from their abdomens. A rectangular steel frame was used to wrap the silk around to dry. A single black widow can produce up to 1,000 feet of silk in their lifespan.

Once the silk was collected it was necessary to be cleaned of dust and impurities using a brush, some acetone, and a very steady hand. That same steady hand then lays the silk strand over a diaphragm with weights on both ends to pull it taut.

The firm, yet flexible length of silk is now ready to be affixed to a weapon or instrument requiring precision. In addition to withstanding shocks and vibrations black widow silk is able to handle radical change in temperature, altitude, and humidity which makes it useful to soldiers on land, sea, and air. 

Although advances in technology over the years we can now rely on lasers and etched glass to aim our instruments properly but that does nothing to invalidate the black widow’s little known war hero status. Next time you come across a black spider with the tell-tale red hourglass it isn’t necessary to offer a salute, but a simple nod of respect wouldn’t be undeserved.