By Wally WachterRetired Herald Managing Editor
INSECTS SEEM to be on their way out. Their ranks are beginning to diminish year after year.
The unusually wet spring we experienced this year has given a reprieve to the mosquito population. The cutting down of acres of trees in a surge of new building in the suburbs has released some carpenter ants, causing a minor household plague as the critters find new quarters of their own.
But other insects that made summer pests of themselves back in our younger days appear to be vanishing.
I remember when fly swatters were among the biggest-selling summer items in grocery stores and five-and-tens. The killing ends were made of finely meshed wire that last for many seasons. Today, you have to scout through aisles at discount stores to find the swatters. And the modern varieties are made of plastic that breaks or comes apart after a few swats.
A standard kitchen-counter item in those days was a sheet of sticky flypaper to trap the flying insects before they could get to the food. I presume that mixed with the gluey substance that covered the paper and captured the flies was a sugary sweet concoction that attracted them.
There was the yukky task to dispose of the sheet after it became black with the corpses of the hostage insects. It took fingertip handling to fold it into a package to fit in the garbage.
The adventuresome flies that explored other rooms of a house met their doom on a long sticky tape strip that was thumb-tacked to the ceiling. These gooey strips had to be replaced every week or so.
The diminishing of the fly population can be attributed to several factors. Tight window and door screens have become almost impenetrable for insects. Back in the old days we had to settle for wood-framed half-screens that pulled apart to the width of the window. Then the panes were closed to the top of them. They were hardly insect-proof, as were the wood-trimmed screen doors that never quite fit the spaces they were supposed to cover.
Today, modern refrigeration has made it needless to keep tempting foods sitting on counters to attract flies. Spraying of lawns with insecticides has thinned the ranks of not only flies, but other insects that kept us slapping ourselves when we were young. Powerful aerosol sprays that ``freeze-kill'' bugs on contact also have taken a heavy toll of wasps, hornets, bees and mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes, although they are making a comeback, are not nearly the nuisance they used to be. We were told when we were kids that if we dabbed ourselves with citronella, the mosquitoes would avoid us. The pests that flew around in our vicinity apparently were unaware of that superstition. Every morning we would compare mosquito bites with our buddies, the one with the most being the one who had spent the most miserable night.
Electric lights that attract insects and burn them to a crisp on contact have taken the place of the long flypaper strips and made evening picnics more pleasant.
The little white butterfly moths, common in the gardens and shrubs in our day, are hardly even seen anymore. We used to catch them in our fingers when they lit on a flower, then let them loose to fly again. The large beautiful butterflies of various colors that we used to pin to a display page in our science notebooks seem to have vanished.
It's been a long time since I have seen a grasshopper. We had more fun catching them in our hands, and playfully threatening them with demise unless they gave us ``tobacco.'' This was a brown substance they spit into our hand. They were always freed to hop again.
June bugs that used to peck at our windows trying to get into the house the end of May and early in June have forgotten what month it is and rarely show. Piles of them that usually were found dead around windows and on porches in the mornings no longer appear. Even Japanese beetles which once swarmed here are becoming scarcer.
It's a good bet that nobody _ except maybe science teachers _ are saddened by the demise or dwindling ranks of the pesty bugs. Our war against them through the years is finally bearing fruit _ the kind that won't attract fruit flies.