Loathsome!

Jap-Snail Invasion of New Ireland

From Our Own Correspondent

Kavieng, Dec. 1.

POLICE and Customs officials here seem powerless to check the invasion of a loathsome snail that is causing more peril than a large Communistic migration from the Dutch border. The demoralising effect on the local natives is apparent, and only by combined effort of the plan ters can this pernicious element in our midst be kept in its place.

Of a nomadic disposition, with a stan dard of living even lower than the native himself, this “camp follower” was first brought to New Ireland by the Japanese troops to satisfy their protein needs, and, as may be expected, it does its dirty work mostly at night.

A true hermophrodite, the giant snail, Achatina Fulica, is breeding far and wide.

Every individual is an egg producer, and a single snail could, in five years, pro duce 11 billion offspring, weighing 11 bil lion pounds. Up to 300 eggs are laid in a single hatch.

But ducks like “him,” and the future of New Ireland may lie in large-scale poultry breeding for the export market!

Achatina has a really high protein value and, if the worst comes to the worst, and we’re ever cut off again in this charming neck of the Pacific, we should not be stuck for “kai,” what with the abundance of snails, frogs, fish and coco nuts. But I do wish the goats wouldn’t eat the hibiscus, for hibiscus leaves also have definite food value!

You can see these horrible snails squashed along every yard of Bulomin ski’s famed highway, which also scin tilates with the fragments of millions of smashed snail-shells.