The Silverfish That Ate Spokane County History Discovery Of Paper-Eating Bug Worries Archivist, Could Cost Taxpayers

Talk about lousy timing.

Just as a state archivist was digging through dusty Spokane County court documents, a black widow crawled out of the box.

The archivist recoiled as a county worker calmly slipped off her shoe and squished the arachnid.

No big deal, she said. Workers see them from time to time in the drafty basement of the old S&T building near the courthouse. That’s where shelf upon shelf of documents are stored - often for decades - until they’re copied onto microfilm.

After that close encounter, archivist Richard Hobbs started looking more closely. What he found - from a historian’s point of view - was more startling than a venomous spider.

Silverfish. Lepisma saccharina.

To county taxpayers, the quarter-inch insect is big trouble. It may cost $6,500 to fumigate, said County Clerk Tom Fallquist. That doesn’t include the cost of fumigating another nearby building where the county stores more documents. It apparently is infested with silverfish, too.

Not familiar with the insect? Look in an encyclopedia, where you may find a live silverfish in addition to the short description.

Experts say these bugs eat paper and the glue that binds books like a linebacker tearing into a T-bone.

“If they build up in big enough numbers, you do see libraries that have real problems with them,” said Richard Zack, an entomology professor at Washington State University.

Hobbs was so alarmed at the bugs that he wouldn’t take the five boxes of documents he collected that March day to his own storage room at Eastern Washington University, lest the infestation spread.

“They were held in our van for several days and I made an emergency trip to Olympia … to place the boxes in the state archives’ freeze dryer to kill the silverfish and any other insects,” Hobbs wrote in an April 17 letter to Fallquist.

Hobbs could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

County commissioners, who were briefed on the problem Tuesday, did not make any commitments to take care of it.

“Before we do all this, I’d like to see some demonstration of damage,” said Commissioner Steve Hasson. “I’d like to see something they’ve eaten.”

Could be tough to find. County archivist Peg Prouty said if there’s been any damage to documents, she hasn’t seen it. In fact, she’s not sure what a silverfish looks like.

The black widows haven’t been a problem since June, when the county sprayed around the outside of the building, she said.

As far as Prouty knows, the spiders have never bitten anyone. The office is used by lawyers and journalists researching old cases, as well as politicians digging for evidence of nasty divorces and other dirt on their opponents.

Fallquist said he’s taking Hobbs’ concerns seriously.

“This person is the head of the division of archives. If he tells me there’s a problem, then I’ve got to respond to it,” Fallquist said.

But he worries the pesticides may eat microfilm, and could pose a health threat.

It may be possible to drive the bugs from the building using equipment that emits a high-frequency whine that humans can’t hear.

That process would only cost a couple of hundred dollars, Fallquist said, and is not harmful to people or documents.

Zack is skeptical. Most scientific studies he’s read conclude the devices don’t work.

“If the silverfish are there, (the county is) going to end up using some kind of chemical,” he said.

, DataTimes