Here they come.(Local) - The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA)

Byline: JANIE BRYANT

NORFOLK -- BY janie bryant

THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT

NORFOLK - Two public health workers pulled dippers from the back of a truck and headed up the walk of a house in Suburban Acres.

When no one answered Thursday, they stopped at a bucket of water sitting on the porch, taking a dip and then peering at it. Nothing there.

Mattie McCray, who has been hunting down mosquitoes for 11 years, noticed a garden scoop in the flower bed.

She picked it up and turned it over to drain, then a flower pot. All in all, she declared the house one of their success stories, a complete turnaround from the time they had pointed out some problems to the homeowner.

When the rains end, it's pool time for mosquitoes - and high noon for those vastly outnumbered vector control folks.

Across South Hampton Roads, it's a war fought with tools such as surveillance to aerial spraying. A lot of the battle is preventing the bugs from earning their wings in the first place.

So in Norfolk, door-to-door education and inspections are a rite of summer - and a way to recruit troops on the front line. They might need all they can get this year.

'It is probably going to be a buggy summer,' said David Gaines, a public health entomologist for the state.

Drought followed by rain can mean a 'big resurgence,' he said.

'Generally after many seasons of heavy rain, there can be a decline in the mosquito population,' he said.

Mosquito parasites, predators and pathogens tend to build up in the water, he said.

'What happens with drought is it dries out all the habitats, and all those things that are bad for mosquitoes go away,' he said.

When the rains come again, they are starting with a 'clean slate,' he said. 'Mosquitoes can breed like nobody's business for a while.'

These days people see skeeters as more than a picnic nuisance. They worry about West Nile and other mosquito-borne diseases.

There have been no human cases of West Nile in the state so far this year, but it's early, Gaines said. Cases have been reported in Colorado, California, Texas and Louisiana, he said.

West Nile generally is worse in times of drought.

'Weather forecasters had said it was going to be a dry summer,' Gaines said. 'I was expecting it might be a bad West Nile year,' he said. 'I'm not sure anymore.'

The good news is that the emergence of West Nile has made people more aware of the health hazards. Mosquito-control programs have doubled in Virginia in the past five years, Gaines said.

Last week was National Mosquito Control Awareness Week - but telling people who live and play along the beaches and creeks of Hampton Roads to be aware of mosquitoes is like telling a bleeding fish to watch out for sharks.

What some residents do continue to need is a nudge on clearing out the breeding places in their own backyards.

Some tend to make light of the notion that the mush in their gutters or the water pooling on the boat tarp might help fuel their city's bug count.

'Source reduction is the answer, and most people have breeding sources in their backyard that they have forgotten,' said Agnes Flemming, environmental health manager for the Norfolk Department of Public Health.

'A teaspoon of water can breed a lot of mosquitoes,' she said.

So workers such as McCray and Jacob Crites march ahead of the mosquito fog trucks on Norfolk streets, arming residents with strategies to keep the enemy from multiplying on their lawns.

After finding the front yard of the Suburban Acres home owner in good shape, they headed for the back. There they spied a tire tucked under a bush in the back yard.

They pulled it out and ladled up water dark as coffee. McCray peered into the murky cup and spotted gold: larvae of Toxorhynchites - a species of mosquito that doesn't bite people but munches on nectar and other mosquitoes.

'I see three of them in there,' she said, pulling out a plastic bag and pouring the dark water into it.

'We take them back to the lab and feed them larvae.'

When they get to the adult stage, they will be set free to help the cause.

The workers headed back to the truck. McCray pulled out a pamphlet and started a note for the homeowner about what they found.

A woman rounded the corner and stopped, rolling down her window. She wanted to know whether they had found mosquitoes at her house down the street.

'You have nothing wrong with your house,' Crites told her.

'Thank you,' she said, looking pleased as she drove away.

It's not always that way.

Crites remembers when they treated a long-neglected fish pond with a product that suffocated the larvae.

'The water started jumping up in little ripples,' he said.

Their work takes them out in the thick of it on the muggiest days to stick their eyes - and noses - up to the muckiest of rain collectors.

McCray likes knowing she's doing her part for the community, though.

'It's an honest job,' she said. 'And it is an important job.'

* Reach Janie Bryant at (757) 446-2453 or janie.bryant@pilot online.com.

CAPTION(S):

Norfolk Health Department workers Jacob Crites and Mattie McCray go door to door to take samples and look for mosquito breeding grounds.