Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: If you're anything like me, you spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time at museums, whether it's geology, science, arts, or general history.
Speaker 1: There are few places like a good museum for immersing
Speaker 1: yourself in the past. At their most cynical, they are
Speaker 1: tax havens for rich donors, but at their best they
Speaker 1: provide centers for culture, learning and research. If this show
Speaker 1: has taught me anything over the years, it's that the
Speaker 1: past is still very much alive in small, tangible ways,
Speaker 1: because life leaves behind evidence from the fossils of the
Speaker 1: dinosaurs to the footprints of small creatures walking through your backyard,
Speaker 1: and all that evidence requires intensive cataloging and studying from many,
Speaker 1: many people. But it's not just people who work at museums.
Speaker 1: Some of their work is done by colleagues that aren't
Speaker 1: exactly human. I'd like to introduce you to the strangest
Speaker 1: employee of many natural history museums, a creature called the
Speaker 1: dermisted beetle. These small bugs have been part of museum
Speaker 1: preservation for over a century, and their function is a
Speaker 1: delicate one. You see, animal bones can be incredibly fragile,
Speaker 1: and cleaning them with man made tools would likely damage
Speaker 1: or destroy precious specimens. It's possible to use boiling water
Speaker 1: to clean individual bones, but it's a labor intensive process
Speaker 1: and it contains many opportunities for human error. So what
Speaker 1: museums do is unleash a small army of dermistids on
Speaker 1: animal carcasses and let them do the work for them.
Speaker 1: Both larvae and fully grown beetles eat the flesh from
Speaker 1: the bones until they're spotless and ready to exhibit. It's
Speaker 1: the larvae that are particularly effective, leaving even these smallest
Speaker 1: bones without a scratch on them. It's not a perfect process,
Speaker 1: and sometimes museum employees need to use tricks to entice
Speaker 1: the creatures to feed on these animal parts, and these
Speaker 1: tricks include drying out animal carcasses or painting less appetizing
Speaker 1: meat with things like bacon grease. Now, it's not definitively
Speaker 1: known where this practice started, but some theorized that the
Speaker 1: first dermisted beetles used in a museum were in Kansas
Speaker 1: University in eighteen ninety five.
Speaker 2: There they were.
Speaker 1: Employed by a man named Charles Dean Bunker to clean
Speaker 1: full skeletons for study. But given how widespread the practice
Speaker 1: has become, it's very possible that Bunker was not the
Speaker 1: first man to attempt using bugs to clean bones. What
Speaker 1: makes dermisted beetles especially useful is that they're surprisingly picky
Speaker 1: eaters for what they do. They won't touch anything that's
Speaker 1: been preserved like fur, feathers or organs, and they also
Speaker 1: don't touch anything that's been treated with formaldehyde. Therefore, the
Speaker 1: chances of them damaging completed exhibit pieces is very low.
Speaker 1: In the wild, Dermistid beetles are a little bit more problematic, though.
Speaker 1: They appear wherever there is carrion, and sometimes they appear
Speaker 1: in places where there is no carrion at all. Certain
Speaker 1: strains of dermistids are fond of violin strings, causing stress
Speaker 1: to musicians all over the world. They're called bow beetles,
Speaker 1: nesting on the strings that are made with animal guts.
Speaker 1: The regularity with which they appear on dead bodies left
Speaker 1: in nature proves useful in forensics too. When a decomposing
Speaker 1: human body is found in the wilderness, forensic analysts can
Speaker 1: use the life cycle of the beetles as a way
Speaker 1: of determining the time of death. It's easy to write
Speaker 1: certain creatures off as parasites, particularly insects like dermisted beetles
Speaker 1: that nest in rotten corpses, moldy wood, roadkill, and rank
Speaker 1: animal flesh. But as we continue to study the ways
Speaker 1: the natural world works, worth remembering that even the gross
Speaker 1: little insects have a role to play, and sometimes they
Speaker 1: can be the most curious of lab assistance. The three
Speaker 1: British airmen had seen miracles in the past few days.
Speaker 1: Their plane had been forced to land in Nazi occupied Belgium,
Speaker 1: but they had narrowly avoided capture by the Germans. They
Speaker 1: somehow lucked their way into a Belgian underground safehouse, and
Speaker 1: now they were being told that a fearless secret operative
Speaker 1: was coming to lead them home. As she entered the room,
Speaker 1: though the tired airmen thought that she looked like one
Speaker 1: miracle too many. They listened in stun silence as a diminutive,
Speaker 1: dark haired young woman explained that she was now their mother,
Speaker 1: and as their mother, it was her job to get
Speaker 1: all three of them to safety in Spain. She left
Speaker 1: and it was a while before one of the airmen
Speaker 1: broke the silence. Our lives are going to depend on
Speaker 1: a schoolgirl. Small and young as she was, Andre DeJong
Speaker 1: was no schoolgirl. In fact, the twenty four year old
Speaker 1: was the leader of the Comet Line, a secret five
Speaker 1: hundred mile underground path from Nazi occupied Belgium to freedom
Speaker 1: in Spain. Andrea was born in Belgium in nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: and from a young age she knew that she wanted
Speaker 1: to help her people. Her hero was Edith Cavell, a
Speaker 1: nurse who had helped hundreds of Allied soldiers escaped German
Speaker 1: camps during World War One. So it only followed that
Speaker 1: when Germany began to invade Belgium in nineteen forty, Andre
Speaker 1: jumped right in to help. She joined the Red Cross
Speaker 1: as a nurse helping captured Allied soldiers, but her real
Speaker 1: work was with the Belgian resistance. She started by bringing
Speaker 1: British soldiers captured at Dunkirk to safe houses and getting
Speaker 1: them disguises and fake IDs, while the soldiers were safe
Speaker 1: for the time being, getting them back home was a
Speaker 1: whole other challenge, but Andrea was determined to live up
Speaker 1: to her hero Edith, and soon enough she and a
Speaker 1: few like minded friends came up with the plan. They
Speaker 1: would lead small groups of soldiers in disguise through the countryside,
Speaker 1: taking trains, buses, even walking through fields. They'd identified sympathetic
Speaker 1: citizens and they would use homes as safe houses, and
Speaker 1: with extreme care, they would lead the soldiers five hundred
Speaker 1: miles through France, cross the Pyrenees and get them to Spain.
Speaker 1: They'd bring the soldiers to the British embassy in Bilbao,
Speaker 1: and the British could get them to the British owned
Speaker 1: Gibraltar at the southern tip of Spain, and from there
Speaker 1: they could safely be ferried or flown home. Through trial
Speaker 1: and error, Andrea and her friends soon found that this
Speaker 1: was easier said than done. To avoid German patrols, they
Speaker 1: had to travel miles out of their way. Several conspirators
Speaker 1: were captured, killed, or sent to concentration camps, including Andre's
Speaker 1: own father, and it was a hard task to feed,
Speaker 1: cloth and keep captured soldiers healthy on the long march
Speaker 1: to Spain, Andre famously told many of the soldiers that
Speaker 1: they would be lucky to get through it without being
Speaker 1: captured or even dying. Despite all this, though, Andre's escape
Speaker 1: route gained a reputation for being the quickest way home,
Speaker 1: which gained the nickname the Comet Line. For two whole years,
Speaker 1: Andre herself led dozens of expeditions to the British consulate
Speaker 1: in Bilbao and personally saved one hundred and eighteen Allied
Speaker 1: soldiers with each successful mission. Andre was also able to
Speaker 1: smuggle information back to the Belgian resistance, but the Comet
Speaker 1: Line came crashing to the ground in January of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty three, when Andrea was betrayed. She had arrived in
Speaker 1: a French Basque town just over the border from Spain.
Speaker 1: She and three British airmen planned to spend the night
Speaker 1: in a safe house and crossed the border in the morning,
Speaker 1: but the group was spotted by a neighbor who alerted
Speaker 1: the German authorities. Andrea and the soldiers were captured and
Speaker 1: sent to concentration camps. But Andrea's small size and unassuming
Speaker 1: looks saved her once again. While being questioned at Ravensbrook
Speaker 1: concentration camp. The Gestapo refused to believe her when she
Speaker 1: admitted that she was the organizer of the Comet Line.
Speaker 1: They sent her into the general population of the camp,
Speaker 1: where she mixed in with the other hundreds of small,
Speaker 1: malnourished prisoners. By the time the Germans realized that she
Speaker 1: had been telling the truth, they were unable to figure
Speaker 1: out which of the prisoners was her. Even with their
Speaker 1: leader captured, though the Commet Line continued to ferry another
Speaker 1: seven hundred British soldiers to Spain. Andre DeJonge stayed at
Speaker 1: Ravensbrook for two years until the Allies liberated the camp
Speaker 1: in April of nineteen forty five. After the war, she
Speaker 1: worked as a nurse at leper colonies in several African countries.
Speaker 1: She passed away in two thousand and seven at the
Speaker 1: age of ninety, after a long life spent helping other people.
Speaker 1: While that British airmen may have worried about such a
Speaker 1: young looking girl being the mastermind of an underground escape route,
Speaker 1: Andrea's story is a reminder that looks can be deceiving.
Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosity's podcast. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.