crab louse

Print ads included a silhouette of a chow, with the promise that One-Spot killed lice, ants, fleas, aphids, bedbugs, crab lice, potato bugs, cabbage worms and Mexican bean beetles.

Williams once called crab lice his “occupational disease.”

The nameless character telling us his story is a man with some years on him and various somatic complaints: “crab lice,” eczema, a bit of unsightly damage to his skull.

Thus the entries for Jan. 18 include George Washington, in 1790, suffering with sore gums and, in 1943, Tennessee Williams rattled by crab lice.

Her expression, commonly used here to refer to something or someone annoying, roughly translates as “What crab lice.”