CURIOUS OCCUPATION

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 July 1936, Page 10

CURIOUS OCCUPATION

MAN EATS POISONOUS INSECTS. How would you like to earn your living by swallowing spiders, glass, cockroaches. snails, and things even Jess palatable? That’s the part-time job of an American named Perry Fattig. As well as being curator of a I museum in Georgia, he works for a number of mineral water companies; they employ him to cat any unpleasant object which a customer may find in his drink.—“just to prove it isn’t ri ally harmful.” i Insects are his main diet. .Many a jury, after watching him pul them down without ill effect, has decided that a complainant who unwittingly did (he same thing is not entitled to any damages. Mr Fattig ims eaten more than 10,009 insects and otherj small creatures since this part of hisi career began! [ The insects include beetles, grass- ;

hoppers, caterpillars. If you ate a single ono of those in your life, you'd

probably never forget it! But .Mr Fattig might describe them as tasty morsels, compared with some of his other tit-bits.

For instance, more than once he has eaten a. humble-bee. He thinks nothing of consuming a salamander — which, in case you don’t know, is a member of the lizard family. Quite a few snails have disappeared down his gullet, and he has actually swallowed poisonous Central American centipedes!

; A toad is an unusual thing to find in a bottle of mineral water, but one ‘has been discovered there. It was (sent to Mr Fattig, who ate it without demur.

I Eating a black widow spider is perhaps the most awesome thing he has i ever done. This insect is known as l“tho killer” in (ho United States, for

its bite is several hundred times more poisonous than that of 'the deadly rattlesnake. And Mr Fattig ate it alive. Quite recently he also ate sixteen small pieces of glass which a customer said he had found in a bottle of pop.