FUMIGATION

2 shows booked for 2012, more to come!!

March 24th, 2012
Brass Monkey - 250 Greenbank, Ottawa, ON
with: Paradigm Divide (CD Release Show), Carneia

July 30th, 2012
Rainbow - 76 Murray, Ottawa, ON
with: Saprophyte (Toronto), Carneia

Despite the name, Cockroach Poker has nothing to do with poker – except that the game is all about bluffing, but with cards showing cockroaches, rats and stink bugs instead of queens, 10′s and aces.

The deck includes 64 cards, with eight copies of eight types of critters. To set up the game, shuffle the deck and deal the cards out to players. On a turn, a player takes one card from his hand, lays it face down on the table, slides it to a player of his choice, and declares a type of critter. The player receiving the card accepts the card, she says either “true” or “false”, then reveals the card. If this player is wrong in her claim, she keeps the card on the table in front of her face up; if she is right, the player who gave her the card places it face up before him.

Note: despite the German box text the game has no writing on the cards and the rules are multi-language.

Flea Circus is a pretty simple cardgame with a circus or carnival theme. Players play cards (generally one at a time) representing fire breathers, animal trainers, clowns, cotton-candy vendors and the like in an effort to attract spectators who, depending on what card is played, can be taken from a pool or from another player. Watch out for the Animal Catcher though - your audience are cats and dogs, and he’ll take them away!

Thanks to globalisation, Bedbugs have become the world’s most despised globe trotters. The parasitic insects can’t fly but they are capable of sneaking into your suitcase under the cover of darkness and crawling out when you get home. Masters of stealth, bed bugs can squeeze into the tiniest of holes but they do leave behind a tell-tale clue – a dark spot of processed blood.

Bed bugs have been such a problem because they breed rapidly and can soon colonise your house if left untreated. They have also shown signs of resistance to certain pesticides.

Because bed bugs are so cryptic you may not even know you have them for several weeks. One tell tale sign is a trio of bed bug bites, all in a row, and referred by some losers with no friends in the industry as breakfast, lunch and dinner. Here are some interesting facts about bed bugs:

 Bed Bug Facts:

• Bed bug eggs are about the size of a dust speck and very difficult to see. They are sticky and can attach to anything.
• All bed bug species feed on warm blooded animals. Cimex lectularius is the bedbug that feeds on blood from humans.
• Bed bugs are nocturnal and like to stay close to a food source, so are usually found in areas where people tend to rest and sleep, hence the name bed bug.
• If you see a bed bug during the day it indicates a possible infestation as the insect may have been pushed out of a hiding place due to overcrowding.
• It is theoretically possible for bedbugs to transmit disease, though this link has not been proved.
• Bed bugs can withstand a wide range of temperatures from nearly freezing to 48 degrees Celcius.
• Bed bugs were commonplace before the 1940′s when DDT was used to decimate the golbal population.
• Newly hatched bed bug nymphs are straw-colored and no bigger than a pinhead.
• Bed bugs shed their skin five times before reaching maturity. A blood meal is needed between each successive molt.
• A bed bug takes between three and 10 minutes to feed.

World War I conditions were horrific and death was never far away. If the soldiers managed to survive enemy shelling and the sneaky sniper’s bullet they could just as easily be defeated by an illness such as Trench Foot or Wiel’s Disease. Fleas, lice and rodents were rife and would plague the men with disease.

Lice caused Trench Fever, a nasty and painful disease that began suddenly with severe pain followed by high fever.  Although not usually life threatening, Trench Fever was  debilitating, requiring a recovery period of two-three months. It wasn’t until 1918 that doctors discovered that lice transmitted Trench Fever. Lice sucked the blood of a host infected by trench fever and then spread the fever to a successive host.

Trenches often flooded with rain in which frogs swam. Red slugs would ooze from the mud. At night opportunist rats crept out. Discarded food cans would rattle as the rats crept inside to lick the remains. More horrifically the rodents were sometimes referred to as corpse rats. They bred rapidly in their millions and swarmed through No-Mans Land gnawing the corpses of fallen soldiers.

The rats would taut sleeping soldiers, creeping over them at night. There were long bouts of boredom and rat hunting became a sport. To preserve ammunition, shooting at rats was banned but piercing them with a bayonne became a pastime for some soldiers. Canadian troops engaged in many rat hunts at Ploegsteert Wood near Ypres during March 1916.

Trench conditions were ideal for rats. There was plenty of food, water and shelter. With no proper disposal system the rats would feast off food scraps.  The rats grew bigger and bolder and would even steal food from a soldier’s hand.  But for some soldiers the rats became their friends. They captured them and kept them as pets, bringing a brief reprisal from the horror which lay all around.