A mosquito man’s responsibility lay within the boundaries of his assigned zone, and the job was simple—to kill the larvae in your zone before they hatched into biting adults.
The selective insecticide used in the treatment of water-borne mosquito larvae left most other life in the source, the beetles, the tadpoles, the mayfly nymphs, unscathed. But to fail at larviciding almost always meant a predawn assault with the fogger truck and its thick cloud of indiscriminate fog laying waste to anything with six legs and an exoskeleton.
“Go get me a leg count out at Gate One,” said Ernie.
“On it,” said Rob.
“Take Jerry with you.”
“Sweet,” I said. “What’s a leg count?”
We pulled up to the gate and got out of the truck. “There’s nothing here,” I said, the warm mid-morning sun on my face.
“Let’s go down into the shade,” said Rob, and we walked down behind a huge cottonwood. The tree’s thick canopy cast a dark and cool shadow over the pasture.
In an instant, the females lit and began to probe with their proboscis through our shirts. They found our bare hands and found our necks. They found our faces. If we sat there in the shade for thirty seconds, it was twenty-eight seconds longer than we needed to, to know there was a serious problem with someone’s larviciding effectiveness. It was morbid curiosity and machismo that kept us there to see what we could take.
A leg count is slang for landing rate, or how many mosquitoes land on you in a given period. Ideally, there is a number in a mosquito abatement program’s treatment plan reflecting the public’s tolerance, which once met, would trigger an adulticide treatment. For us, that number was two per minute, meaning if two mosquitoes landed on your pant leg in one minute, then that was grounds for unleashing fogger hell. In the thirty seconds I could stand to be in the shade of that tree, I nasally respired at least two and would guess the landing rate at several hundred times the threshold trigger.
Great explanation Jerry
Ernie was adept at sniffing out undiscovered breeding sources of Aedes melanimon that wreaked havoc in nearby communities, and his methodology for imprinting the significance of those findings on his superiors was stinging. “Mosquito 2 Mosquito 1”, he’d call out on his Motorola, “I’d like you and Bob (Bob Kennedy, Director of Environmental Health and X OVMAP Manager) to meet me out on Collins Rd. at the A-1 drain”, I want to show you something”. “10-4”, I barked back. I loved making chatter on my big, heavy Moto. I was the boss, and the feel of that black beauty in the palm of my hand, close to my lips, was empowering. On arrival he told Bob and I to climb in the back of his GMC 1500. There was never room on the bench seat next to Ernie, as shotgun space was permanently reserved for his ever expanding pile of stuff. So impressive was the clutter that you immediately recognized it was easier to hop in the bed, anyway. To boot, Ernie knew Bob and I loved riding, open air, in the back of pickups when we were out in the field. Much better way to see, smell and survey the land. “OK” we said with enthusiasm and hopped in. Off we went, heading southeast towards the Big Pine Canal and east border of the flood irrigated pastures of the Yribarren cattle ranch, territory Bob and I had never bothered to search before. It was August and over 100 degrees with humidity near as high. Ernie rolled up his window and turned the AC to high. The Mosquito Man had us right where he wanted. Even over the noise of the vehicle and rattle and bang of loose equipment on that flooded, cattle beaten rutted road, you could hear the buzzing hum of billions of Aedes low in the grass, awoken to the smell of blood headed in their direction. And then we were in the thick of it. A source for the ages. Swiping not swatting. Rapping on the rear cab window with a sense of urgency, we lipped, “Get us out of here, Ernie, you’ve made your point” Ernie smiled, that God loving smile of his, nodded, turned around, and took his time removing us from the slaughter. We swore at him the whole way out. The Mosquito Man had gotten our attention and helped produce a healthy batch of new Aedes eggs in the process. I love you Ernie!
I do remember that day. I’d have to say a two hundred leg count for sure!
Rob Miller the Mosquito Killer !
Nothing but pure cowboy politics my friends LOL – One of the greatest joys in my life was to work with the greatest men that I’ve ever met – MC-1
AIN’T NO MAY 10th
By Rob Miller
The Year was 2002. It’s a Friday, the 10th of May. Ernie says, “Rob, hold the fort down I’m heading out to South Dakota to check on some property. Show Jerry the Big Pine mosquito sources.”
“Okay, Ernie we got it!”
I pull out a smoke as Ernie grins and starts peeling dirt, spinning his wheels pulling a broady. We watch the 1993 Ford Ranger leave the dirt parking lot of the Road Department leaving only tracks with a cloud of dust. Jerry says, “What’cha smokin? Ever try one of these Camel Turkish blends?” He pulls a smoke from some waterproof container that looked like a snakebite kit.
Jerry was a new hire greenhorn from Up State New York still in his twenties. I trained him for about a month, so add that month to my five months of know-how from the previous season and you get about a half a year of experience for me, not exactly a seasoned veteran, though I pretended.
I tell Jerry, “This ain’t your ordinary, average job. It’s a muddy job, and it gets a bit dirty but is an adventure too. Last year I found a dead guy out at the sewer ponds.”
“It’s only me, you, and Ernie this season and we’re responsible for the whole county from Rock Creek Lake all the way down to Keeler! I think it’s something like 1700 acres.”
I said to Jerry, “We’re gonna have to make up a batch of BTI, then let’s boot up, grab your BTI bag and dipper. Come on, load up old smoky on that trailer, hook it up to the Ranger, and follow me down to Big Pine.” (Old Smokey, was an old 1995 Honda Fourtrax that needed a ring job, it blew smoke rings when first fired up).
Jerry says, “I’ve never pulled the trailer before.”
I told him, “It’s easy. I used to haul thirty-foot logs from the forest on an old loader trailer before I started this job. This ain’t nothin’!”
We drove down to Big Pine near the river and unloaded our quads. We took off along the river checking the Oxbows. I decided to check out our riding skills and said, “Come on.” Jerry followed me up a hill.
We rode up the steep hill and as we crested the top, my right rear tire slipped off the old cattle trail and started tumbling about fifty feet down. I jumped from the tumbling quad, and we both watched with amazement as the rear rack breaks off as it comes to rest tangled up in a pile of barbed wire.
Gathering myself, I pulled out an old set of wire cutters from the toolkit on the quad. “It’s a good thing I keep these on hand,” I said. I started to cut the quad from the tangled wreckage.
Jerry asks, “Do you think we can pull it back up the hill?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “I’ll see if it’ll start.” I twist the key, and the battered bike fired up. Looking over the cliff, I hesitated. Fear shot through me and I thumbed the throttle. I shot off the three hundred foot cliff gassing and braking at the same time. The effort reminded us of the scene from, “The Man From Snowy River” as I drove the quad almost straight down through sagebrush and bouncing terrain with the luggage rack dangling behind.
“Yeehaw!” I yell as I reached the level ground with rear rack dragging off the back of the quad. “Well, it looks like I’m going to take this back to the shop and weld the frame back on this horse. You better stay down here in Big Pine and check some sources on over at Big Pine Creek. I’ll keep the Motorola on,” (the Motorola was a bulky county radio we wore on our belt before cell phones).
Back in Bishop, while I finished up welding my quad back together, the Motorola crackled to life. “MC-2 this is MC-3. I think I’m stuck and need a rescue,” came a faint and exhausted voice over the radio.
“10-4, copy that, what’s your twenty?” I say.
“I’m out in the middle of the Big Pine Creek oxbows, probably a mile and a half south of 168,” comes a timid reply.
“Okay, I’m on my way. Over and out.”
I drove to Big Pine and spotted Jerry out in the middle of a floodplain, surrounded by islands of water, his quad drowned. I meandered my way through the brush and found him exhausted and covered in mud. I ask him, “How the heck did you get that thing in there?”
Jerry said, “Well my roommate told me that those quads could float, so…”
I got close enough to hook a chain to his quad, and we pulled it to safety from the water. It would not start. We towed the quad back to the trailer, loaded it, and brought it back to Bishop.
I pulled the spark plug because the engine seized when water got sucked through the air cleaner. I cranked the engine, and it blew a mixture of water and fuel all over the quad. I didn’t think to ground the coil wire, so it sparked and caught fire.
For the second time today we looked at each other in amazement as the quad went up in flames. “Where’s the fire extinguisher,” asked Jerry.
“I don’t know,” I say. We dashed to the container, and Jerry found one on the wall. We ran back and blasted the muddy burning quad with a cloud of white fire retardant. I look over to Jerry as we watch a smoldering muddy mess of a quad and I said, “Well, how about some lunch?”
After lunch, I said to Jerry, “We better just stick around Bishop for the afternoon. Why don’t you head out and treat that Rossi pasture behind the road shop?”
“Okay,” says Jerry and we both went separate ways.
When I returned to the shop at the end of the day, I noticed the luggage rack broken off of Jerry’s quad I ask him, “What the hell happened to that?” He tells me, “Well, I tried to run down a coyote, and I think I broke it.”
MC-3 and I worked together for another decade, long enough to see our beards speckle in gray. MC-3 eventually became the boss. We saw a lot of good days and bad days, but whenever equipment failed, things broke, or skeeters bit the crap out of us in one hundred degree temps, we could always look at each other, laugh, and say, “Well, at least it ain’t no May 10th”.
There’s a certain amount of love and respect one gains from working side-by-side with a fellow mosquito man. As I embark on a new season with a record snow pack in store and ponder the thought of training up a new batch of greenhorn Mosquito Men, I think back to those pioneers, the Merry Men of old, from days bygone. It’s to them that I raise my glass in a toast, to those, the Mucky Muddy Men of the OVMAP that have earned the right to call themselves “Mosquito Men.” You know who you are!!
They are the men that wear the rubber boots with a dipper in hand, that carries on their shoulder a twenty-pound bag of sand!
Who have trudged through the swamps of every oxbow they can see, endured the sweat of one hundred degrees.
Have treated every pasture through the whole valley, familiar with names like Tiebout and Big Trees.
They have experienced the buzzing sound of a fresh River hatch, and know when to pour a golden BTI batch.
A mosquito man knows what a three hundred leg count has in store. He’s been chased by clouds of the biting menace of a billion or more.
A morning fog of beauty that few have ever seen is a skeeter man’s glory through the morning lights beam.
Just a few Jobs the Mosquito Men do, to all those past and present, I salute you!
Copy that! 10-4! Over and Out!
MC-2
Copy that!! Ahh, a toast, to all those that earned that right. This Rolling Rock is for all those trailblazers that fear not disease, nor death.
I too, have discovered that quads are not sub-water convertibles. But, this may be the year that breaks all others. The time has come for May 10th, to be challenged. I’m with you Rob, in heart. Much love, my Brother!
Awesome! A toast to you my ” Brother from another Mother ” for you too are one of the few that have earned the right to be called a Mosquito Man of the OVMAP.
This is the looking up to be the season to beat all seasons! Yes! We’ll see what this May 10th has in store. Might have to bring you out of retirement?? lol. Thanks for support and heart! Once a Skeeterman, always a Skeeterman! Much love for the brethren! ” SATISFACTORY “