Bloody Business

One official in Maryland's Somerset County calls it "an aggravation." Some of Somerset's oft-bitten residents would describe it in considerably stronger terms. Because of heavy rainfall, muggy weather and high tides that keep water overly long in the salt marshes of the state's Eastern Shore, the area is aswarm with mosquitoes. To determine how bad the infestation really is, the state's department of agriculture sent human volunteers into a mosquito-infested marsh and had them stand still for 60 seconds. As many as 100 mosquitoes per minute landed on the volunteers' exposed skin and clothing. That is not a record, but it was enough to provoke the state into something more than slapdash measures. Some 30 square miles along the Chesapeake shoreline have been sprayed with insecticide.

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