Call the Cops! Someone Stole My Tarantula!

OK, hands up or we’ll shoot! 
Pat them down, Sgt. Kelly. 
Not too hard. 
You don’t want to kill any hissing roaches or centipedes.

Yes, in other cities bugs are stomped-on, sprayed or swatted.
In Philadelphia, they’re stolen.

Who knew bugs can be valuable? We learned that bugs worth $40,000 were taken in an inside job this past summer from the Insectarium, a kids’ museum on Frankfort Avenue in Torresdale.

Just last week we posted a story on this blog describing the enormous federal battle to kill Japanese beetles first seen in the United States across the Delaware in Riverton, N.J. Certainly, huge amount of cash are spent every year to kill agricultural pests.

But there are collectors for everything – including rare insects.

An exterminator – Steve’s Bug-Off – opened the museum on the second-floor of his office in 1992. The center piece was a modern kitchen – surrounded by some sort of electrical barrier – containing hundreds of cockroaches.

Today both floors are museum space and the new featured attraction is a live butterfly exhibit.

Security cameras inside and in the parking lot revealed young employees walking off with the valuable bugs and a few reptiles. We assume the villains were juveniles because the police have never released the names of those arrested.

There is a spider in my bathroom. Wonder how much a collector would pay for it?

Japanese Invaders Hit the Delaware Valley

The Japanese Beetle and kudzu farm

Were the Japanese practicing their evil 1941 attack on America much earlier right here in Philadelphia and south Jersey? It certainly seemed that way.In 1876, the Japanese introduced a decorative plant called kudzu at the huge Centennial Exhibition that drew 10 million to Fairmount Park.

Then, in 1916 a shiny new insect was discovered at a Riverton, N.J., plant nursery. The bug arrived with imported plants from Japan. It was the Japanese beetle, capable of destroying farm crops, orchard, pasture even a golf course.

Herculean efforts by federal and state agencies to contain the Japanese beetle to a small area of southern, N.J., failed. Since 1916, the beetles have spread to every state east of the Mississippi.

Let’s first take a look at the “kudzu monster.” At the 1876 Centennial and at the 1883 New Orleans Exposition, the Japanese sold kudzu. It had nice flowers, grew quickly and was good to frame a front porch. It was also good feed for livestock.

It was in the 1930s that the government handed out free kudzu plants as ground cover to farmers to fight soil erosion. Many farmers went bust and abandoned their properties but the kudzu kept growing.

Though the kudzu was bad, the beetles were worse.  In late July 1923, the they swarmed across the Delaware River in huge numbers recorded in a long, detailed front-page story in the Inquirer.

Large Inquirer photos showed three men sitting around a bushel basket of corn in the Dock Street market picking out beetles. Another photo showed beetles all over a man’s clothes.

The nation was deadly serious about halting the beetles. One government entomologist had just returned from three years in Japan becoming an expert on the insect. And a Department of Agriculture lab was established in Riverton to test out way to exterminate the pest.

For a while New Jersey and the Philadelphia area was put under a “quarantine.” In order to ship out produce, fruit, cut flowers, sand or soil, every box and container was searched for beetles by more than 200 federal inspectors.

The government put out a list of plants the beetles liked to eat, including everything from asparagus to pussy willow. They munched on the leaves of most trees. The Philadelphia entomologist worried that Fairmount Park might provide a smorgasbord for the bugs.

The term “yellow peril” was used to describe the beetle invasion. One newspaper columnist said a “new sport among shoeshine boys on the Delaware River ferry boats was to pick off the Japanese beetles from Jersey commuters.”

The quarantine didn’t last long. Eventually a Japanese beetle trap was developed.

In 1931 a news story claimed that “530 million Japanese beetles were trapped and killed” in New Jersey. We wonder who was counting.

Suggested Highway Sign: ‘Camels Use Bicycle Lane Only’

A relative in Hawaii sent an e-mail in November with the subject: “Here’s Something for Your Blog. Only in Philadelphia!”

The e-mail contained a short video clip of a camel by the side of the road in a snowstorm near Philly.

No need to explain. Unless you were visiting Azerbaijan at the time, you saw the clip on TV or social media and know the amusing story.

It happened on November 15. 
Here are two questions about the inconsequential camel story, and two questions about important news stories on that date.  
Try the quiz. Answers below:

1 – The camel had a name. What was his name? On what highway was the
camel stranded?

2 – Two huge wildfires were blazing in California. Name one of the fires. In
what state were they recounting votes for a U.S. Senate seat?


ANSWERS:

1 - The camel’s name was Einstein and he was seen on Rout 309.
2 – The two large California wildfires were the Camp fire and Woolsey fire. The Senate recount in progress was in Florida.

Monkeys Escape Zoo and News Reporters Go Ape

Those of a certain age remember Monkey Island at the Philadelphia Zoo.

Perhaps a few, remember the three great monkey escapes in 1940, 1945 and 1954.

There was something amusing and charming about a bunch of little monkeys escaping the Zoo and cavorting through West Philly and Fairmount Park with a posse of cops, firemen and zookeepers in hot pursuit.

About 50 rhesus monkey lived surrounded by a moat of water and a steep seven-foot wall. Standing atop the wall and water were visitors tossing peanuts and candy. Two Great Escapes occurred while the moat was drained to allow cleaning.

Monkeys on the run provided the perfect opportunity of news reporters who fancied themselves great wits and punsters to “go ape.” The May 1940 Inquirer story called those trying to round up the monkeys “great white hunters. It was the mightiest safari since Spencer Tracy found Dr. Livingston.”

One monkey  was captured in a West Philly taproom “and by the time firemen arrived he was playing the pinball machine.” 

Monkeys caught along the railroad tracks wanted to “hop a freight for the Congo.”

We counted 25 lame jests in this one story. One monkey died “emulating Santa Claus” by jumping down a chimney. Another corny quip had the monkeys captured with “butterfly nets, flypaper and putting salt on their tails.”

Only 13 monkeys escaped in 1940 and all were rounded-up in one day.

In 1945, 19 monkeys went on the lam when they got a wooden board and used it as bridge to cross the moat. It took six days to round them all up. The last one captured was sitting on top of George Washington’s statue in front of the Art Museum.

There were far fewer attempts at newspaper humor in 1945 when four monkeys escaped. These escapees scared motorists on what was then called the West River Drive. They played on the Girard Avenue Bridge and then returned to the zoo where they were lured into a ladies’ room with bananas and caught.

Pet monkeys sometimes escaped in the city. A rather large variety of monkey was jumping around on the rooftops of Montrose Street in South Philadelphia. Three SPCA workers were trying to net him while about 200 spectators cheered for the monkey.

The Inquirer writer couldn’t resist a little joke. After its capture, the SPCA guys “put a belt around his hands – probably to prevent him from signing a movie contract with Tarzan.”

Needless to say, headline writers got the phrase “monkey business” into all the escape stories.

When South Philly Was For the Birds

Moyamensing: It’s a Indian word that has generally been translated as “pigeon poop.”

Why on earth would the noble Lenni Lenape Indians call a large swath of today‘s South Philly “pigeon poop”?

We think the answer is obvious to anyone who has read about the extinct passenger pigeon - once considered North America’s most numerous bird.

Early settlers write how huge flocks of these good tasting birds would block out the sun for two or three days as they flew overhead. They always traveled in enormous flocks. And they always rested at night on tree branches.

When the birds took off again, the trees and ground were covered in bird feces – sometimes inches thick. Thus, the Indians called the area moyamensing, meaning pigeon poop.

How did a bird that once numbered in the billions become extinct by the early 20th century? Look it up on Google – fascinating reading.

Rats! It's Philly's Biggest Export

Philly's Biggest Export is Pretty Small

Guess which Philadelphia product has sold more than any other – millions of unit?

Clue, it’s actually an animal and like the Labrador retriever, the Bengal tiger and Shetland pony, it’s named for a place – a place in Philadelphia.

You guessed it – a rat. 
It’s a rat that was bred right here in West Philadelphia: the pure white Wistar rat.

Unlike the nasty rats that spread disease, the albino Wistar rat is gentle, cute and extremely useful to medicine. It was probably the first animal bred for laboratory use and can claim to be the most numerous lab animal in the world.

Scientists at the Wistar Institute developed the albino rat in the early 1900s. They carefully bred the rodents in order to get consistent, accurate results from medical experiments. So, they all have the same size, physical characteristics and genes.

Wistar also made money by selling their rats to countless other labs. You can still buy pure-bred Wistar rats from several breeders around the world.

Today there are other strains of laboratory rats but the Wister rat is still the most popular rodent in medical labs.

Philadelphia Zoo Goes Moo: Hosts Civil War Celebrity

Now good citizens, let us offer a patriotic salute to a hero cow…actually a heroine.

When the Philadelphia Zoo opened in 1874, it housed a spectacular collection of 616 animals: camels: elephants, lions, a tiger, a rhinoceros, kangaroos, bears and one aging milk cow.

But this cow was an honored Civil War veteran. 

Named Atlanta, the aging bovine had accompanied General William Tecumseh Sherman and his troops during the Union Army’s march through Georgia.

We don’t know how long Atlanta lived and whether it eventually ended up as dinner for the big cats.

Let us end on a happier note by mentioning the Zoo’s first prairie dogs. They regularly escaped from the Zoo by simply burrowing out.

When South Philly Was A Real Jungle

Street crime, Mafia wars, house fires, crazy drivers on narrow streets, all can add a measure of danger for those living in South Philadelphia.

But in 1971 there was an element of unexpected danger that was strange and weird even by South Philly standards – snakes.

In the wee hours of Sept. 7. 1971, new mother Midgalia Santiago, 18, was fast asleep in her rowhouse apartment on 7th Street near Snyder Avenue when she was suddenly awakened by a sharp pain in her foot.

Santiago had just been bitten on the foot by a cobra!

She was rushed to a nearby hospital and the unharmed baby was rushed outside. The cops and an SPCA employee with a dog noose gingerly entered the apartment and captured the cobra.

The victim survived, primarily because the bite was not too deep.

A couple of days later, a seven-foot Burmese python was found in another house on the same block.

And why was a deadly cobra and a python slithering around old row houses?

The answer was a recently closed pet shop on the block that specialized in exotic animals and birds. The owner claimed his shop had been broken into twice recently and it was the bandits who let loose the snakes.

Pet store owner Harry Bock lived nearby with his wife, six children, 500 armadillos (packed in boxes for shipment), 16 snakes, a gila monster and one alligator.

On the third floor was Bock’s personal pet – a young mountain lion.

According to press reports, the city had no law against owning dangerous animals and snakes. All the city could do was hit Bock with $100 cruelty to animals fine related to the mountain lion and the tightly packed armadillos.

We think this was the first and last time a “cruelty to armadillos” charges were filed by the city of Philadelphia.