Sir Jonny Bore, a wood worm with a family tree
Still Goethe believed the fact, how we know from the recordings of his friends, that the wood worm begins to gnaw always above and by its own weight then slips automatically into the gap. At 1907 D. Maurice de las Fantas developed the solution, which were acknowledged experimentally in 1942 at the rocket research station Peenemuende by Wernher von Braun. Please have a look to the schematic representation. The worm gnaws (A) at the wood, extracts (B) the nutrients and vitamine and leaves the sawdust-like residue by the exhaust (C) of itself. This occurs under considerable power, whose recoil drives the animal forward. Rear acceleration corresponds always exactly to the speed of devour (Brown's law), so that the worm adjusts its speed with the dentures.
Nutrition: The principle is well-known; there is no other domestic animal, whose nutrition causes so few costs and trouble. This - and naturally its quiet, unobstrusive type - make the wood worm to be the most beloved domestic animal. But at first one must think a bit about its nutrition. Some wood worms are general-feeder. They take maple, balsa, zeder, spruce, birke, teak - as it comes and it is even - if necessary- also contently with an old orange box. Other animals need completely determined woods, for example quebracho.
This specialization goes every now and then amazingly far. In its well-known book "There's a worm in" Herzmansky reports an art dealer of Amsterdam, who could breed after many years a worm, which rejected all tree wood exceptall of the lime wood, gotic Madonnas are made of. Further it rejected even masterful copies, so that with its assistance a number of most refined falsifications could be exposed. Since the art dealer did not know anybody, which he cold spend the wood worm for to live after his death, he determined by will that one should saw several Madonnas and build the boards of a coffin from. So the worm would would be still some years in his near.
Now, the survivors adhered exactly to the will, although reluctantly. More than the destruction of the Madonnas they bothered that the small expert should gnaw useless a coffin, instead of being active for the company further. To their joy they found, that the dead man had calculated without asking the worm. This curved fully inexpressible disgust, when they put him on the coffin to induce and was not even to move to a sample drilling by friendly talking. So they learned that it concerned to the sensitive animal not alone the antiquity of wood, but the work of art as such. With bare boards, even from gotic lime tree, it was not served. This is of course an exceptional case, one could call it overbreeding.
The normal field -, forest and meadow worm wants - like already suggested - no exaggerated requirements. Perhaps it does not take even each wood, but one can be rather safe to find under the sorts usual in the furniture production the correct one. At best one procures first at a carpenter a small assortment of samples (the sawed-off ends of boards are sufficient) and submits them to the worm for a selection. The result should be decisive then for the furniture purchase.
The following is to be considered : While production of modern furniture normally uses only a quite thin size of the valuable wood, on which the customer is interested, is glued-up on thick boards of a cheaper sort as veneer. If the worm is forced to live in the thin stack it can tighten itself easily cold diseases, since its flanks are often not sufficient covered. One pays attention thus, massif to receive unveneered wood - but the reverse case is dangerous, too. We take e.g. a cabinet, Mahagony veneer on spruce. Our worm lives and works thus modestly in the fir wood, in which it is specialized. If now the owner, perhaps by illness, cannot worry some time his small friend, then it could occur that he opens the cabinet after his recovery - but the cabinet consists actually only of filmy Mahagony - inside he discovers the wood worm, died of hunger.
I know a man, to whom this occurred. He was a professional boxer, a bull of a man, and he broke down nevertheless and cried like a child. After long months he could rise again into the ring, but its earlier high form he never got again. The tragic of a sportsman. Open your eyes at the furniture purchase !
Diseases: Generally a healthy wood worm does not have diseases. One has to pay attention to the risk to catch a cold, described in the nutrition section. If the worm already coughs, then ensure that it come to live in thick wood, so that it is completely covered. In bad cases additionally turn on the heating. Draft is to be avoided absolutely. If the wood worm suffers to a chronic cold, an australian housemedicin is recommended: place it in eukalyptus-wood for 5 to 6 days. Digesting disturbances are often, but not hard. The reason is mostly that the worm in the heat of gnawing feeds carpenter glue (especially at cold glue it can cold the stomach). Usually it chamfers some days, during this time you even won't be able to locate a gnawing noise with the stethoskop.
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