The US Army mosquito breeding program

A few months ago it rained at our big base, which it doesn't do very often. Even less often does it rain almost 2" in a day which it did. The ground isn't used to that and after the mud dried the base was dotted with standing pools of water, some big and deep where flood control pits had been excavated, some big and shallow where there hadn't and many more in between. Few of them were disturbed by vehicular or foot traffic so they were all filled with the most beautiful, clear, still water. The kind mosquitoes like best.

About two days after the rain, there were a few mosquitoes, after three days more and after four aggressive, motivated flocks of them. It wasn't quite as bad as the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but almost, which is saying a lot. I kept looking for the somebody to be doing something to the water, putting something into it. Nothing. I asked the guys at the med shed if anybody was doing anything and they just shrugged their shoulders. So the little killers were out and biting until the water dried up 2-3 weeks later. Toward the end when it was dark and nobody was around we poured used turbine oil on our local pest pool. We couldn't do it in the day because the environmentally conscious PC Army would have disapproved. We had to be sneaky, which was fun. It seemed to help some.

I was quite disappointed with the Army. I figured they would be out slaughtering larvae and wigglers within a day. When I was a boy I read heroic stories about the Army pioneering mosquito control and saving multitudes. That is what I expected to see, not the nothing I did see. But we learned. Next time, we sneak out with the turbine oil the first day.

Gorgas and Reed would not be happy.