by Lulu Volkhausen

 
Six o'clock in the morning comes pretty early. As I'm riding my  
scooter along Mathews Lane I'm amazed by the pastoral beauty of the  
surrounding hills. I'm also amazed by the stark reality of the  
waterless lands. Without water this area would be a desert. It is a  
desert. We humans have chosen to alter this environment and that is  
exactly why I'm riding my scooter down Mathews Lane at this early  
hour. I'm off to ride shotgun with the larvicide crews. I have no  
idea what I'm in for. I only know that I'll need my irrigation boots  
and a jacket for the chilly morning air and I'm going to be killing  
mosquitoes.

I get to the shed and get a quick lesson on the finer points of  
"dipping". I'm teamed up with Ruben, a recent Paonia High School  
graduate. I'm thinking back to the days when my teenage sons would  
drive me anywhere just for the chance to drive. I love it. Ruben and  
I set our sights on the sites we have on our lists and we're off.

The very first thing that came to my mind was, "this is great; I'm  
going to get to see some places I've never seen before." The second  
thing that came to my mind was, "I hope I don't get eaten by  
somebody's over-zealous dog." The third thing was pretty  
sobering,"This is a huge area. How are we ever going to cover it all?"

Ruben and I started "dipping," finding mostly smaller, first  
and second instar, stages of larval development. This is a good thing. 
It means that we can be sure that our bascillius thuringensis is the  
most effective method of control. Bt kills mosquito larvae by getting  
into their little guts and causing them to explode. Think "Alien". When  
we find pupae, mosquito larvae that are in the final stage before  
flying, we have to use a nasty-smelling oil-based product that will  
kill by smothering. There's no time to lose; it could be an hour or  
maybe even minutes before the pupae pupate and we have flying  
mosquitoes.

I'm loving this now. I'm doing and learning and becoming more and  
more impressed with the whole larviciding routine. Ruben records our  
findings at every site. Did we or did we not find mosquitoes, what  
stage of development were they in, what did we use, how much of a  
product did we use? In areas that had already been treated once this  
year we find that the larvicides are working nicely.  I'm over the dog  
thing, I'm over the new places thing, but the "how can you possibly get  
to all of this vast area?" continues to boggle my mind.

I'm thinking of all of the little places that I know of that could  
breed mosquitoes. I wonder when you've killed enough to bring about  
shift in the balance of the populations that sways the odds in our  
favor. How many do you have to kill before the natural predators, of  
which there are many, can handle the adult  
mosquitoes that manage to hatch in spite of your best efforts? How  
many do you have to kill before you tip the balance so that the  
natural predators aren't getting enough to eat and they move on to  
happier hunting grounds (literally and figuratively). Do these Aedes,  
the flood plain mosquitoes that make up our main population,  
play fair? They don't carry West Nile virus. Do they have ebbs and  
rises in their populations that occur naturally? If so how can it be  
that people are overwhelmed by them night after night? Their numbers  
should fall off every once in a while because we know that windy days  
disturb the water surface enough to drown the little buggers. A hard  
downpour will drown eggs and larvae, but of course it also makes more  
areas for those pregnant mothers who have fed on blood to lay more  
eggs. Well, those are some of the things that can make you go "huh".

One other thing impressed me when I was out larviciding. It was the  
amounts of trash that were in and around the ditches and river.  
Generations of old machinery, old pipes and culverts, bed springs,  
tires, bottles, plastic bags, stoves, lawn movers, etc. are  
everywhere. It's hard to see it all and get to it once the vegetation  
gets high but next spring, really early on, this place needs a good  
cleaning.

Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I firmly believe that  
all these mosquitoes come from mismanagement of all this blessed  
water that is brought to us by miles and miles of ditches and pipes  
that generations before us worked hard to install so they could build  
a better life. It's up to us to deal with the consequences. If they  
could do it, we can do it. I'm in.