Word: insectes
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...surest weapon against the roach is extreme temperature. The insect thrives between 70 and 80° Fahrenheit, but can be killed by dry air at 86°, becomes numb at 35°, dies at 23°. It is also very susceptible, when it can be reached, to poison. In Manhattan the most common varieties of roach are the American (an inch and a half long) and the German (half as large) ; the German is locally known as the "Croton bug" because it first invaded the city in large numbers when holes were cut in walls for water pipes...
...bedbug is harder to poison. Unlike the roach, it is an epicure: it feeds on human blood. A loathsome, wingless insect, it is light brown and flat before feeding, swells up and turns mahogany afterward. Chief difficulty in fighting bedbugs : housewives hate to admit their presence. Though the common bedbug hurts little except family pride, a relative known as the "kissing bug" transmits Chagas' disease (a deadly parasitic disease originating in Brazil) to human beings. A Lethane spray is the most effective bedbug poison...
Country Visitors. By far the most damaging insect, and most at home in modern civilization, is the clothes moth. It has been known to eat house insulation as well as clothes, rugs, etc. (it is destructive in the larval stage only). Best weapons against the moth are sunlight, moth balls or flakes, paradichlorobenzene. Chemists have recently developed effective new methods for permanent mothproofing of wool - for postwar...
...hardest insect to control is the ant. Manhattan is infested with small red ants; they often nest in buildings instead of in the ground, eat sweets, meat, greasy garbage. The most successful poison against them is thallium sulfate baited with sugar - but all prewar supplies of thallium sulfate came from Germany and France...
Technology has been a boon to the silverfish. This swift, slithery, scaly insect, less than half an inch long, is an old inhabitant of forests, where it nests under stones and in the bark of dead trees. But it has recently migrated to the city in prodigious numbers because of its fondness for a modern product: rayon. It also likes linen, starched cotton, flour. Unlike the moth, which feeds slowly, the silverfish is a ravenous eater, can make lacework of a shirtfront in a few hours. It is also very hard to starve out ; a well-stuffed silverfish...