The Wilmington morning star., 1940-05-01
WASHINGTON
DAYBOOK
BY JACK STINNETT

WASHINGTON, April 80. The slap-and'
scratch season soon will be with us . and ]
figured it's high time we got into the middle OF
the mosquito situation.
Wars may come and wars may go but the
fall of the house of Oslo doesn't strike nearly
as close to home as a cloud of whirring mos
quitoes on H night you and the best girl
have gone to the lake for a picnic and a swim.
Sitting in Rock Creek park the other night,
I slapped at a whining noise nearing the back
of my neck. It might have been the first mos
quito of the season. Like a diplomat caught in
a corner, it refused to be interviewed. But just
hearing it there gave me an idea and I popped
in on the federal bureau of entomology today.
They know more about mosquitoes than ]. Ed
gar Hoover, Martin Dies, and the army COM
bined will ever know about Nazis.
For example, Kipling couldn't possibly have
written with so much fervor about the female
male, if he hadn't had a brush with mosqui-
toes. AS a matter of fact, it's the female mos
quito that's afflicted with blood lust. \
They Groom of Love
The young men of the tribe are just winged
Rudy Vallees and Bing Crosbys who vo-do-de-
o-do about the summer night, trying to get the
ladies to pay them some mind. And it's their
little habit of going where the female hum
ming is thickest that the bureau of entomology
hopes will be their undoing.
The bureau is pushing a new electrical CAD
get which duplicates the siren love songs of the
mosquito femmes. When the young men dash
into the trap, the result is shocking . at
least shocking enough to kill the love-sick
SWANS. The theory is that if this wholesale
electrocution system can kill off enough males,
the queenies will get discouraged and the tribe
will become extinct. It's a grand theory. l
hope it works.
That wasn't all I learned from the bureau.
Not only are the girl mosquitoes the only ones
that attack man but only one of three families
of girls is deadly.
If you've merely had a night out with the
Culex and Aedes girls, the bureau tells me, you
needn't worry. They are pests, it is true, and
can raise hob and knobs on the skin you love
to touch and yours, too, but they don't do SER
iouS damage.
She's a Changed Gal
Edie Acids and her clan used to pack a kiss
of death but science put a stop to that. They
isolated the yellowjack sufferers put them
where Edie couldn't come up to see them any
more which made a lady out of Edle. That
applies only to this country. There are some
nations where Edie still is doing business as
Murder, Inc, but even there she's losing
ground.
The Borgia of mosquitoes today is Anophe-
les. Annie is the girl who held up the building
of the Panama canal. Her specially is malaria.
It wasn't until the U. S. army medical corps
went to work on Annie-made her home un-
tenable, destroyed her larvae by gillions-that
workmen could work in Panama.
Only recently a flock of the girls Anopheles
Gambiae) hitch-hiked from Africa on a trans
Atlantic plane and started a serious outbreak
of malaria in Brazil. That's why you'll find the
bureau of entomology boys down at the airport
combing over every plane that comes IN from
! South America.
It's Annie's sisters Gncluding a recent debu-
tante Anopheles Walkeri Teobald) down in the
southland that do the most damage in the
United States and malaria victims are so COM
mon there that it's impossible to hide them
all. Annie has some kinfolks in the west, too,
but they have a hard time finding malaria
blood.
The bureau and medicine and education are
making Roadway. The time may come when
the Borgias of Mosquito-land may be as dead
as the Borgias of history. But it's still a good
idea to duck when you hear them hum-o-de-o.
do, even if it's only Bing Mosquito grooming to
a lovelorn mate.