Desire Provoked

Начало книги

CARTER, Adams’ boss, has developed a lively system for recognizing merit. Some years ago he returned from a holiday in South America with several insects in a box. They had been treated with a mixture of South American tree saps and preserved in cotton. Though they resembled common tree roaches, these were, Carter assured his associates, intelligent creatures: platula, a species domesticated for over five centuries by the Indians. Native to Peruvian rain forests, the bugs were originally attracted to the aroma of the Indians’ pipes. They would crawl onto smokers’ shoulders and perch there like parakeets. “The relationship of certain South American Indians and their insects parallels that of the American Indian and his dog,” Carter said. When a favorite insect died, it was coated with tree sap and worn around the neck on a string.

Carter bronzed the bugs and made them into pins. He decided to collect insects wherever he went: Carausius morosus from Asia, Bellicostermes from

Читать дальше →