THE EVENING BULLETIN — JUNE 13, 1894
The Courier-Journal has received from “An Old Fogy,” at Huntsville, Ky., a package with this note :
Inclosed please find two locust wings with a W or an M on them. I am at a loss to know whether it means Wilson’s Wrangle or McKinley’s Millennial. Please give your interpretation.
The letter is a W and marks the wings of that species of the locust known as the whangdoodle, the M, so far as is known, having no other significance than as an initial of the insect’s name.
The whangdoodle is a very peculiar insect. It is the most erratic member of the Locusts Migratoria family. It has no regular periods of visitation, like its seven, thirteen and seventeen-year kin. Its coming, however, is not thought to be in independence of all law. On the contrary the appearance of the whangdoodle has long been considered as accompanying certain conditions of the human race. This theory is so well established by an extended series of observations that it is now hardly thought worth while to dispute that the whangdoodle is always an accompaniment of the waves of folly that occasionally sweep over the country. For many years there has been no passing epidemic of popular lunacy which has not brought with it the orthoperous whangdoodle. Indeed there is little excuse to-day for ignorance of the fact that the whangdoodle always comes in numbers proportioned to the greatness of the need for the fool-killer.
