Word: moth
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Episodes from a late-night horror flick? Not at all. More like cinema verite. Once again, the Northeast has been infested by gypsy-moth caterpillars in record numbers. Last year the bugs chomped so voraciously through more than 5 million acres of woodland that the usually lush summer landscape looked as leafless as in late fall. This year's damage, patchily extending from northern Maine to Maryland and beyond, is far worse: an estimated 11 million acres of forest, an area larger than all of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island...
...poker and chess. The movement of fire-breathing, life-annihilating pawns on a global board of a spinning planet." At another point he says, "the news accounts of congressional travel plans rubbed like shards of glass in an oozing wound." His fear of losing his campaign is "a gray moth of doubt that had ballooned into a terrifying pterodactyl whose razored jaws were shredding what remained of my confidence...
...Super-Saver had a key-making machine and computerized check-out. It sold everything from its own brand of moth balls to picnic tables, from gag mugs to ratchet sets. A sign in the window warned customers all summer that Coke and Super-Saver aspirin were on sale only until the end of the week...
...death in 1924, at 91, the experiment was inherited by colleagues at Michigan State College (now University), who had been bequeathed a map showing where the remaining bottles were buried. By 1960 only three varieties of seed still grew. A decade later, one hardy weed survived: Verbascum blattaria or moth mullein...
...unearthed this year were planted, as usual, in soil sterilized by steam. But at first nothing happened. Had the century-old seeds finally expired? No. After several weeks the first seedling emerged; within five months 29 seeds had germinated. Six of the seedlings died. Of the survivors, 21 are moth mullein, one is another type of Verbascum and the last a variety of the Malva species that had not sprouted since...