March 8, 2017

Aak Attack

By Kat Myrman
No automatic alt text available.

PHOTO PROMPT © Shaktiki Sharma

“Tell me what happened,” said the detective.

“Well, she came in…sat at the bar. This guy, he’s a regular, took a shining to her, but he’d had a few and I guess he got carried away. He grabbed her, you know, where he shouldn’t of. She told him to stop. When he didn’t she sprayed this awful smelling stuff on him. He dropped dead, on the spot.”

When Scientists at the Etymology Experimental Lab across town heard the story they celebrated.The suspect was likely the person who had stolen a vial of “Aak Attack”, an anti-rapist agent. It worked!

~kat – 8 March 2017
(100 Words)

For Rochelle Wiseoff-Fields Friday Fictioneers 100 Word Story Challenge.

A bit of background on the grasshopper you see above from Wikipedia:

Poekilocerus pictus is a large brightly colored grasshopper from India. Nymphs of the species are notorious for squirting a jet of liquid up to several inches away when grasped. It is also known as Aak grasshopper or locally in few tribal areas called titighodo

Adult Form

The half-grown immature form is greenish-yellow with fine black markings and small crimson spots. The mature grasshopper has canary yellow and turquoise stripes on its body, green tegmina with yellow spots, and pale red hind wings.

The grasshopper feeds on the poisonous plant Calotropis gigantea (Giant Milkweed).

Upon slight pinching of the head or abdomen, the half-grown immature form ejects liquid in a sharp and sudden jet, with a range of two inches or more, from a dorsal opening between the first and second abdominal segments. The discharge is directed towards the pinched area and may be repeated several times. The liquid is pale and milky, slightly viscous and bad-tasting, containing cardiac glycosides* that the insect obtains from the plant it feeds upon. In the adult, the discharge occurs under the tegmina and collects as viscous bubbly heap along the sides of the body.

*From ancient times, humans have used cardiac-glycoside-containing plants and their crude extracts as arrow coatings, homicidal or suicidal aids, rat poisons, heart tonics, diuretics and emetics. Today these steroids are processed to treat heart conditions.

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