QUEER ACCIDENTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 205, 31 August 1933, Page 23

QUEER ACCIDENTS.

A man seems to have attained a record in the way of unusual disaster. The horny leg of a grasshopper caught his eye and inflicted a wound. Infection was caused owing to lack of attention to the injury, and the sight of the eye was lost. A committee ascribed the man's own version of the tragedy, '"Kicked in the eye by a grasshopper." The driver of a fast car collided with one of the huge brown flying beetles called "rosechafers.'' Flying from the direction in which the man .was driving, it struck him fairly on the centre of an eyeball. The pain was momentarily agonising, and caused the driver to lose control of his car and to crash. A stranger, though trifling, accident was the. case in which a butterfly entered a sunny room by day and, unable to get out again, settled 011 the cornice and slept till the gas was turned on at night. Then it flew distractedly about and finally settled on the nose of a man in the room. He raised his hand to snatch it away. A butterfly's feet have hooks like flint; under a good magnifying glass they look like grapnels. Their purpose is to enable the butterfly to attach itself firmly to smooth surfaces, no matter how violently a wind may blow. Therefore, as the man firmly pressed the wings and gently tugged the insect away the little talons held tenaciously to his flesh, and, as they were torn away, so also were minute particles of flesh from the astonished man's nose.