Word: peste
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...worst U.S. crop pests are immigrants. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is usually quick to import the enemies of each new pest, but to adapt these delicate and specialized creatures to life in a new country often takes time. And if the wrong enemy is brought in, the cure may be worse than the disease...
...field supervisor of mosquito control for the city health department, Pest-Hunter Duclus uses modern methods. All through the summer mosquito hunting season he and his men spray DDT into swamps, tidal flats, ponds and irrigation ditches. But Duclus says he owes much of his success to the voracious appetite of a small (2-in.) fish called Gambusia affinis. This olive-colored, viviparous cousin of the guppy thrives in the stagnant waters where mosquitoes breed, lives to a ripe old age of two or three years, and never loses its taste for wriggling insect larvae. In its prime, Gambusia affinis...
Scratch-Happy. Because he reckoned that "cows know where they itch," Cattleman Bill Kirk designed a pest-killer which any range animal can apply to itself. "Old Scratch" is a flexible steel cable, strung with hundreds of steel washers, lubricated by a reservoir of oil-insecticide. The cow just rubs against Old Scratch, is automatically smeared with bug-killer, made happier, puts on weight faster as a result. Kirk, who started out with 11? in capital last year, has already shipped 4,500 models of Old Scratch to ranchers. Price: $198.50 f.o.b. Amarillo, Texas...
...drew his big bead on the college balance sheet. He slashed expenses, symbolically went about switching off lights. To wealthy Portlanders he became a pest. He buttonholed them in the Arlington Club, badgered them with photographs of needy students, demanded contributions to his scholarship fund. He begged from businessmen all over the state. When they gave him their stock answer-"Dammit, Mac, I'll kick in for you, but why do I have to do this for Reed?"-he delivered them a stern lecture on the values of a liberal education...
...stowaway: a yellow-snouted beetle, ⅝-in. long, which was crawling along the coat collar of incoming Conductor Serge Koussevitzky. Department of Agriculture inspectors hastily popped the bug into a vial of alcohol, sent it to Washington for identification. Last week the bug experts reported: it was "a formidable pest," a member of the Larinus family, which lives mainly in France and Italy, is sure death to thistles and artichokes...