“The Bed Bug Story.”

Did you hear about the pregnant bedbug? She gave birth in the spring!

               

“The Bed Bug Beer Stein”

His name was Frans. He was a Bavarian, an older fellow whose family had grown and gone. Frans liked to go to the local guest house each night and drink beer with his old friends. He would play the accordion for the group and they would sing songs that reminded them how young and romantic they were when they fought the French in ’70 and ’71.

Some nights Frans would play too long, sing too loud, and drink too much. On one such night he came in the front door of his house and tripped over the end of the loose rug. While down on the floor already, he decided to crawl to bed.

Bertha had been his wife for 33 years, having married Frans just after he returned from fighting with the Prussians against the French. She was always less than happy about his frolicking each night and was a constant complainer about the amount of beer he drank. So, when he crawled on his hands and knees into their bedroom late that night, she got very angry. She saw red and grabbed the sweeping broom standing in the corner of the room. She hit him several times on his head and his back. As she swung, she was yelling at him, “if it crawls around the house, then it must be a bed bug!”

Poor Frans. Bertha did allow him to go sleep it off after a bit. As he snored, his wife recalled all the good times he had shown her and remembered what a good father he had been for their children.  She felt badly that she had overreacted. The longer she thought about it, the worse she felt. Then, she decided to get him a gift to show her affection.

The very next day Bertha went downtown to the local beer stein dealer and ordered a one liter, salt glazed, grey beer stein.  It was to be customized with his initials engraved on the pewter lid, along with the phrase: “Squash the bed bug.” Along the lid’s rim was engraved, “Remember the smashing on 11 April, 1904.” One final loving touch was added by the local artist who did work for the stein dealer; he painted a three inch bed bug playing an accordion. The dealer then added a grey scroll with those now famous words, “if it crawls around the house, them it must be (=) a bed bug!”

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Bertha gave Frans his unique, very special beer stein about a week after the now famous incident. He loved that stein and used it every night at the gatherings, except for the few days it took to get repaired after the pewter strap broke one night. 

His friend, the pewter-smith, knew how much the stein meant to Frans, so he put an extra strap around the handle to make it even more secure. Frans drank from it every night from then on, and they both lived happily ever after.

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Detail of the hand painting on Frans’ beer stein.

A tale by Steve Smith as told to him by the stein, on or about 4/13/1992.

A University of Virginia biology student conducted an experiment to discover what would happen to a bedbug if its legs were removed.  

He pulled off one of its legs and yelled “hop!”, and the bedbug hopped.  

The student took another leg and yelled “hop!” and the bedbug hopped.  

Then he removed all the remaining legs and yelled “hop!” but the bedbug did not hop.  

The student yelled again, but the bedbug did not hop.  

Being  a top notch UVA student, he concluded that when all the legs of a bedbug are removed it will become deaf.

[END – SOK – 03 = 4D]

“Dolphins are really just gay sharks!”