Choking hordes of mosquitoes. Torrents of excrement-spewing aphids. After enduring an early summer plagued with downpours, Edmontonians are grappling with a 20-year storm of flying insects.
The insect clouds were so thick at Commonwealth Stadium that the Edmonton Eskimos were forced to move their practice indoors. “I thought I was down in the swamps of Louisiana,” said backup quarterback Kerry Joseph, a native of the Bayou State. “It’s the worst I’ve ever dealt with in Canada.”
Aphids, meanwhile, are raining down from the city’s trees. Another beneficiary of the moist spring, the tiny, soft-bodied green insects have been tearing up residential shrubs and gardens – and falling into Edmonton lunches and hairdos. Worse, the aphids constantly excrete a sweet, sticky syrup that can strip paint from cars, finish from porches and turn entire trees black with mold.
Traditional bugkillers are near-useless against the insects. They reproduce so quickly that even the most pesticide-decimated population can bounce back in a manner of days. “It’s like trying to scoop out the ocean with a little bucket or something,” says Mike Jenkins, the city’s biological sciences technician. Edmonton-area garden centres have reported quintupling sales of ladybugs, a prime aphid predator.
Usually, it would be Winnipeggers reporting these kinds of insectoid onslaughts. Gift shops in the Manitoba capital are filled with mosquito-themed kitsch and the nearby village of Komarno even features a prominent metal sculpture of one of the infamous insects. This year, however, Winnipeg is experiencing its most bite-free summer since the early 1980s.
As late as April, Edmonton was issuing optimistic forecasts that 2011 would be a light year for mosquitoes. After several years of drought, city biologists figured that the earth would simply soak water up like a sponge – denying mosquitoes open water in which to lay their eggs. The soil ultimately could not keep pace with a slew of rainstorms, however, and the terrain quickly became pockmarked with potential mosquito nurseries. “We were seeing water in places we hadn’t seen water in decades,” says Mr. Jenkins. City crews tried as best they could to seed the region’s lakes and ponds with anti-mosquito chemicals, but extreme weather kept their helicopters grounded.
Organizers at outdoor Edmonton events such as the Indy have outfitted their setup crews with meshed beekeeper’s hoods just to allow them to breathe without swallowing any mosquitoes. “Just talking on the phone, I actually ate a bunch,” said Don Snider, production manager for the Edmonton Folk Festival, during an interview with the Edmonton Journal.
Spurred in part by the torrent of anti-mosquito calls and letters and flooding into city hall, Edmonton city crews have spent the summer employing a rare — and somewhat risky — weapon against the insects: Adulticide.
Most mosquitoes are eradicated in the cradle. Crews spray bodies of water with a mild hormone that either kills mosquito hatchlings or prevents them from growing wings. With adulticide, respirator-clad crews are being sent to parks and festival venues to literally poison adult mosquitoes out of the air. Since adulticide also has the potential to kill beneficial insects such as ladybugs and dragonflies, the city is using it sparingly.
Meanwhile, three city-owned helicopters continue to roam the countryside wiping out mosquito larvae. So far this summer, the fleet has hit an area one and a half times the size of Manhattan.
The city’s bitten masses have focused much of their mosquito rage on Edmonton city council. On the eve of the outbreak, the city voted to cut the mosquito control budget by $200,000. “The program doesn’t have enough helicopters, staff or equipment to do the job properly,” wrote Glyn Williams, a former supervisor with the City of Edmonton, in a letter to Postmedia. “They didn’t stand a chance under the circumstances.”
Given the prairie plagues that Edmonton has faced in previous summers — a 1982 mosquito outbreak was 10 times worse than this summer’s — 2011 has actually been quite lucky for the Alberta capital.
The same rainfall that brought billions of mosquitoes and aphids to life has also done wonders for the city’s urban forest. In previous years, drought has killed off hundreds of downtown trees and shrubs. “This summer, most of those problems have pretty much gone away,” says Mr. Jenkins.
National Post thopper@nationalpost.com
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