Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 March 1889 — The Death Ticker. [ARTICLE]

The Death Ticker.

As most jieople know, the death watch is a small beetle which frequents decayed or rotten wood, and is of lonely and retiring habits. It is one of the smallest of the vagipennia, of a dark brown, with irregular bright brown spots, the helmet turned up and the upper lip hard and shining. It produces the ticking sound by pecking at the wood with a hard small proboscis, when in the act of secifring food. The writer once chased down a death watch through a pile of old papers in a cigar box, and was fortunate enough at last to see it at work. The ticking was quite as loud as that of an old-fashioned watch, while the insect was not much larger than the bead of a black pin. J