Word: screwworms
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...Ridge National Laboratory last week, Entomologist R. C. Bushland of the U.S. Department of Agriculture was planning a dirty trick on an unpleasant insect: the screwworm fly of Texas and Florida. The female flies lay their eggs in open wounds (even scratches or tick bites) in the hides of cattle. From each clutch hatch about 200 maggots, which eat a hole in a cow as big as a lemon. Often other flies attack the same wound. Unless an outside agency (i.e., a cowpoke with anti-fly dressings) comes to the cow's rescue, she may be eaten alive...
...Screwworm damage costs $15 million year in Texas and about $10 million in Florida, but in spite of the harm they do, the flies are not very numerous. Even in the warmest parts of the country, comparatively few survive the winter. Bushland decided that if he could slow their reproduction he might reduce their population or even wipe them...