Word: basting
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Throughout the northeastern U.S., June's heavy rains greened the countryside in splendid style, creating luscious lawns, luxuriant sprays of roses -and a mosquito crop that is big, noisy and vicious enough to turn the average picnic into a Schuhplattler exhibition. Says Dr. Thomas Bast, associate medical entomologist of the New York state health department: "This year's overall count is at least 200% higher than any other over the past six years. Some traps that usually catch about 25 mosquitoes a night now catch anywhere from...
...Bast places much of the blame on the deluges of Hurricane Agnes: "Eggs that were deposited over the last several years hatched in the high water and high tides." During July, New York state officials began an intensive spraying campaign against both larvae and adult mosquitoes-which can spread encephalitis and other diseases-but it is too late to eliminate the insect hordes. Says Massachusetts Agriculture Official Charles Cannon: "We used to control mosquitoes with massive, year-round larvacide projects. In the summer we sprayed, and in the winter we put down a powder pesticide on ice and snow, which...
Apart from insecticides, little can be done to control the pests except to drain the small pools of stagnant water that serve as mosquito hatcheries, and mosquitoes can discover pools faster than men can drain them. "As for next year," says New York's Bast, "if we have a mild winter, we'll have an even worse mosquito problem in the spring...