Butterflies And

Of Sharks And Butterflies And Rats As Big As Tom Cats

By E. L. Mauseth, of Alden, Minnesota, who claims it is all true. We reserve our comment.

At Sansapor, Dutch New Guinea, in 1944, we were often chased ashore by sharks when we went swimming at sundown to clean ourselves up after a hard day’s work with the US Army Engineers, and a few of us had some mighty close calls.

IT was surprising how fast a shark could travel to chase a man ashore, and quite by accident we hit on a scheme to shoot them, which I guarantee will always work.

About half an hour before sunset, with an incoming tide, fill a gunny sack about a quarter full of fish entrails, or poultry entrails and feathers, and tie about 200 ft of light rope to it; then dig a fox hole about 200 ft from the water’s edge and set the sack in about 6 inches of water.

Two men then get in the fox hole—one to pull on the rope as the tide rises and the other to shoot the sharks as they come in, attracted by what is in the sack.

Both men have to be well hidden and there must be no movement or disturbance in the immediate area, as the sharks can see very well out of water.

Shark Eats Shark In less than 15 minutes after the sack is in the water, you will have sharks coming in. As you shoot them, the other sharks eat those you have shot, most of the time.

We tried this scheme three times and shot from 20 to 30 sharks each time. They were from three to 12 ft long. Each time we had to quit because it got too dark to shoot.

Once we counted about 50 sharks swimming close in to the shore; and once when we pulled the sack within 10 feet of our fox hole, two 6 ft sharks followed it the whole way, which was then at least 100 ft from the water’s edge.

In this same area, out in the jungle, were giant trees that had been toppled by hurricanes years previously. They had trunk diameters of eight to 10 ft.

The trees were well rotted as you could chop about 2 ft into them with little resistance.

On top of the trunks grew a very beautiful orchid that I saw in no other place in New Guinea.

It had a large, waxy, orange coloured blossom with rather short stems. I would be interested to know if anyone knows the name of this orchid or the tree it grows on, of which I saw only two living examples. They were at least 200 ft high.

In the rotted debris under these logs we found the largest beetles I ever saw. They were a purplish black, like most beetles, but were 6 to 7 inches long and about H inches wide. Does any one know their name?

We sawed about three million board feet of lumber while we were in New Guinea and about 10 days after we had set up our sawmill at each site, our sawdust pile attracted many butterflies.

Yet we never saw them in the jungle.

The largest was of a tan brown colour with varied round spots on the wings and was at least 10 or 12 inches across with the wings spread.

A slightly smaller one was black with round blue spots. It would dive bomb you if you disturbed it while it was feeding, and it would chase you if you ran away from it. It was a fast wary flier and could dodge the net every time.

All the butterflies were very beautiful and I should think that we saw about seven differently coloured ones.

It was also in this same area that we saw rats as big as tom cats. Our cook nearly died of fright on seeing six of them early one morning in his kitchen.