Word: lice
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...most of them do not scratch the surface of the bird world. The closest bird watchers in Britain are the learned Misses Miriam Rothschild and Teresa Clay, who comb the feathers of birds, probe their body openings, search through their nests with microscopes. They are looking for the lice, fleas, ticks, mites, flies, worms and other parasites which swarm over all birds. After many years of study, the Misses Rothschild and Clay have published a lively book, Fleas, Flukes and Cuckoos (Collins, London; 21 s.), packed with detailed information about the fascinating parasites that plague birds...
Orwell's Thoreau like fidelity to the details of life make his war vignettes unforgettable. The soldiers "wretched children" of this "comic opera with an occasional death" were much more concerned with finding firewood killing lice and playing practical jokes than they were with killing Fascists. Orwell's objectivity extended even to his own wound. "The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting," he wrote, "worth describing in detail...
Wheeler was soon picking as fast as any Portuguese, and what time the lice left him in peace was spent in tussles with the army's standing operating procedure. Sometimes a man lost to S.O.P.-as when Wheeler showed up with sore eyes, and was rigorously dosed before the entire regiment with "three ounces and a half of the bitter gall Epsom salts, and two hours knapsack drill in double quick time [to] open my back door...
...Allow me to recall only two of the early adventures of Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, D.S.O., featured in your July 2 issue as the world's leading bird-lice catcher...
...colonel and Theresa believe that their own ecological niche, the Mallophaga, contains enough scientific nourishment to support them indefinitely. This year they plan to visit India and Assam. Many new lice are awaiting them there, though political instability, as the colonel remarks regretfully, makes it more difficult for them to reach the lousy birds...