Word: caterpillar
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When a blood-hungry mosquito lands on a human forearm -- or, more likely, on the eyelid of a cow, the haunch of a squirrel, the wing of a roosting bird or even the back of a caterpillar -- she goes to work with awesome efficiency. Her slender proboscis, consisting of two sharp and sometimes serrated cutting % tools surrounding a pair of tiny tubes, pierces the skin (and, if necessary, the cloth or feathers protecting it) and finds a capillary, bending to slide into the tiny blood vessel. Down one tube comes her saliva, which deadens sensation and blocks coagulation...
...state of Washington last week in an emergency campaign to repel an airborne assault launched from across the Bering Sea. No, the ex-Soviet Union had not reconstituted itself and invaded. Instead the object of the search-and-destroy spraying mission was the Asian gypsy moth, which in its caterpillar stage is notorious for devouring the leaves of perhaps 600 varieties of trees and shrubs...
...CATERPILLAR'S 12,600 STRIKING WORKERS IN PEOria, Ill., must have felt last week as if one of the company's mammoth earthmovers had just rolled over them. Despite the United Auto Workers' $800 million war chest (which could have provided up to $60,000 in benefits for every family on the picket line), the five-month-long siege suddenly collapsed. The union leadership failed to gain a single demand on wage and medical-care issues. The employees had to wait to be summoned back to work, while the company considered eliminating more than a thousand jobs. Many U.A.W. members...
...Caterpillar's main strikebreaking tactic had been to advertise for permanent replacements; unemployed workers throughout the region were lining up to fill the $35,000 vacancies. Some U.A.W. leaders feared that Caterpillar's success may have provided a tactical lesson to auto-industry executives who will enter their own labor negotiations next year. But Caterpillar's real trump card may have been the recession itself. U.A.W. president Owen Bieber bravely vowed that "the fight isn't over." If and when it resumes, Caterpillar workers would be better advised to find a stronger moment in a sounder economy...
...U.A.W. loss would erode its future bargaining power. A Caterpillar loss would reduce its profit margin against foreign competition. Either way, it's difficult to imagine a happy ending to this story...