Word: bugging
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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That menacing wasp on the cover and the other pesky bugs pictured and written about in this week's cover story have bewitched, bothered or bitten Senior Editor Leon Jaroff, who edited the story, for quite some time. "My most bitter bug experience was in 1956," recalls Jaroff. "On assignment in Labrador for LIFE magazine I had to go through dense bush to get to Grand Falls. It was the height of the blackfly season, and I returned with 500 bites on my body. For 20 years, I've waited to get even...
...bug assignment reminded San Francisco Correspondent John Austin "of summers in Kentucky with a farmer-uncle who tried to interest me in picking long, thick, pasty-looking hornworms off the tobacco plants." For his reporting, Austin stayed close to governmental and academic experts upstate, while Los Angeles Correspondent William Marmon talked with entomologists in the downstate area...
...course, every war and insect story has its heartwarming moments, when enemies fall in love or, as was the case with Washington's Rosemary Byrnes, bugs have been close to the heart. "Several years ago in Mexico," she says, "I used to wear a live bug about two inches long with rhinestones on its back and a gold chain attached to a pin. I delighted in watching the expressions on people's faces when the normally quiet bug began to move on my shirt...
...battle between humans and bugs goes on, with some hope that man will continue to maintain an uneasy detente with the insect world for centuries to come. But for the long run, the odds are still heavily in favor of the insect. For, as W.J. Holland's The Moth Book poetically prophesies, it is likely that "when all cities shall have long been dead and crumbled into dust, and all life shall be on the very last verge of extinction on this globe; then, on a bit of lichen ... shall be seated a tiny insect, preening its antennae...
...introduction of these insecticides had a remarkable effect on agriculture, which for the first time in history could be relatively bug free. Through insecticides alone, U.S. farmers increased their crop yields by some 10% in the years between 1940 and 1975. Their counterparts in Africa and Asia also began to make some headway in the battle against bugs, as did public health authorities. Widespread