Word: mothing
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...ANGELES Correspondent John Wilhelm first seriously considered the possibility of extraterrestrial life four years ago while visiting the mam moth radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Pulsars - radio signals now thought to emanate from rapidly rotating neutron stars in the far reaches of space - had just been discovered. Arecibo Director Frank Drake let Wilhelm listen a audio signals originating light-years away. Recalls Wilhelm: "It was a little like putting a stethoscope to the heart of the universe. Drake did not dismiss the possibility, however slight, that pulsars might in fact be navigation beacons used by an advanced civilization...
With fingers lighter than a Luna moth's wings, Timothy Mack has spent 13 years spiriting wallets from the pockets and purses of Los Angelenos, an artful dodger's career that has been interrupted by 20 arrests and two jail terms...
...used to battle the bug by dousing forests with DDT. While the persistent pesticide killed the gypsy moth, it also wiped out beneficial insects and harmed birds. As a result, DDT had lost so much favor that when the moth population exploded last year, the bugs went mainly unsprayed. They denuded almost 1,000,000 acres of trees and laid billions of eggs for an even worse infestation this year...
...Just as expected, the gypsy moths (preceded in some places by equally ravenous spanworms) audibly began their leafy banquet on schedule this spring;-"It's awe-inspiring," said Charles S. Wood, chief of Massachusetts' bureau of insect control, when he heard millions of bugs chomping through the Cape Cod woods. "It sounds like a gentle rain in summer." Besides the chewing, naturalists say, the noise is partly the ceaseless drizzle of moth excrement and partly the rustle of falling, half-eaten leaves...
...Final Solution. As the bugs now metamorphose from engorged caterpillars to egg-laying moths, federal and state agencies are stepping up efforts to stop the pests "Spread."Inspectors face the thankless task of searching campers and trailers for gypsy moth eggs. Scientists hope to put out synthetic sex lures that attract libidinous male moths to traps and doom. When the lures were tested in Mississippi, says William H. Gillespie, chairman of the National Gypsy Moth Advisory Council in Charleston, W. Va., "all the male moths did was fly around and frustrate themselves. They never did find any gals to procreate...