THE WOODPECKER

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 229, 27 September 1937, Page 5

THE WOODPECKER

HE WAS HARDY BIRD. COULD NOT BE "KILLED." AMUSING NEWSPAPER STORY. There in a story seldom told outside of newspaper circles that will always be funny. It ia the story of the woodpecker. You have noticed, perhaps, little twoline items that appear here and there in the first street edition. Items like this: "Abyssinia ha« 1,235,000 inhabitants, of which 26 per cent have blue eyes." Or: "France uses 56,789,780 toothpick* annually." Or again: "The Peruvian llama gives annually 7001b of •wool per animal."

These are known as "fillers." They •re used to chink in here and there to fill up spaces. When a column falls a line or two short of the correct length the makeup man shoves in a couple of lines of filler. They are the printer's delight, because with a handful of them he can balance up his page and lock the form.

One day on a metropolitan newspaper « filler showed up as follows: "The woodpecker is a scansorial bird and its tail feathers are rigid." The printers rubbed their hands. That would go anywhere. With that item they could balance any page ever put together. They laid it carefully to one side as one leaves the last strawberry of a shortcake for a final flavour.

Two days later a hole appeared in the front page. Into the aperture went the item about the woodpecker wno insisted on being "scansorial" and kept his tail feathers rigid. The next edition it was shoved out and forgotten. But two days later the woodpecker with the stiff tail appeared on page 2. Somebody in the sub-editor's roam.recalled it,

"Say, this woodpecker was in the paper a day or so ago," he complained. So it was killed out of the proof and again forgotten.

A week later, on the society page, between the announcement of an important engagement and a wedding of class Herr Woodpecker with the stiff tail popped up again. This time the society editor burst out of her cell with a heck of a yell and demanded to know what the so-and-so the office woodpecker was doing on her page.

For the third time the woodpecker was "killed" and the composing room was notified to see that it didn't get into print any more. Two days later, when the first edition arrived, another roar went up. This time the woodpecker with the stiff tail had made the marine page. The squawk this time reached to the managing editor, who issued a peremptory "kill" order against the woodpecker and notified the composing room to see that all slugs carrying the story were melted up.

That should have done the trick. But it didnt. The city editor got back from his evening lunch a day or so later and one of his sub-editors met him with a sad face.

"That d d woodpecker's back in the paper again, Ed," he said. "I don't know what to do. It's in the first edition again on page 5."

The city editor hit the ceiling. He went into a huddle with .the managing editor. They called in the foreman of the composing room. There was a redhot conference. The foreman left and lined up the printers, and for ten minutes the smudge was heavier than a smoke screen on the war zone. Three, days passed and nothing happened. And then on a Saturday night a sub-editor screamed. The woodpecker was back in the paper again.

This time it practically halted the whole paper. An immediate investigation started. Man after man was called up and questioned until finally it dwindled down to one printer, one who was slightly deaf. He had been working on the copy for the page on which the stiff-tailed woodpecker had made its eerie appearance.

"No, I ain't seen no woodpecker item," he said. (A printer is always ungrammatical when fighting for his honour.) "Dump out your pockets," commanded i the foreman. i

The printer upended his apron pockets and out tumbled a handful of little lead slugs. The foreman grabbed one up and read it —upside down and backwards.

"The woodpecker is a scansorial bird and its tail feathers are rigid," he read. "AH! HA!" A chorus of cries went

"Oh," said the printer, "is THAT the woodpecker slug? I didn't read. It was such a nice size I made up a lot of 'em. They're fine for plugging up that first edition."

The foreman gathered the little slugs all up, and while the others looked on he dumped them into a lead pot. They spun around, turned several colours and sank into the molten mass. The woodpecker with the stiff tail had been "killed" at last.—(Earle Ennis, in the San Francisco "Chronicle.")