Article July 27, 1899 Issue

The Kissing Bug

Concord Evening Monitor

The kissing bug is a myth. There is no such creature in existence as the much-advertised melanolestes picipes. The whole thing is a hoax, started by some bright young newspaper men in Washington when there was a scarcity of real news, and swallowed by the gullible public as many a hoax has been before and will be hereafter. The Washington boys started the yarn as a hot weather fake to relieve the tedium of a summer with no Congress in session, and the enterprise of yellow journalism did the rest. Pictures of the mysterious bug have been published, and telegraphic dispatches have told of its serious, and occasionally fatal, ravages. And now the truth is out, and the public will have to laugh away its discomfiture at having been fooled again.

A Washington correspondent of the Pittsburg Dispatch tells the origin of the kissing bug, but probably the exposure of the hoax will travel neither as far nor as fast as the hoax itself, and many people will continue to live in mortal terror of the winged osculator.

It was in the early part of June that the wonderful creature was first heard of. At that time many complaints were made to the police department of Washington by colored women, that a big colored man had stopped them on lonely streets at night and kissed them. In some instances the complaints said that the ruffian had bitten them on the mouth or cheek. The police tried hard to catch the colored man, but were unsuccessful. The policemen were worried, for the complaints continued, and the newspaper men and others began to make fun of the police department. At length, as a teaser for the officers, the theory was offered that the kissing of the dusky damsels was not done by a human being at all, but by a bug. This notion being duly discussed in Newspaper Row, it was decided to invent the kissing bug, a new entomological terror, and have a little fun with it during the hot spell.

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