June is National Pest Control Month, but July and August are National Pest Out-of-Control Months, when we live in a state of siege. There are screens on the doors and windows, electronic zappers, citronella candles, and closets full of chemical sprays. But the bugs love our hospitality so much that nothing will keep them away.
It’s a war, inside and outside the house - an offensive rather than a defensive war, the kind we like best. We don’t like bugs, they don’t like us, and they have a different lifestyle. They must be vanquished. Etymologists will argue that insects are often beautiful in a miniature way, and useful, and even ecologically essential, all of which is true. But war allows no such weak concessions – an enemy is an enemy.
When I was growing up, the most formidable insect killer in the house was a fly swatter. Then DDT was invented, and we sprayed it indiscriminately on anything that moved. We lived all summer in a fog of insecticide, although it never did me any harm. But I suppose I would be the last to know. When DDT was banned as a health hazard and we went back to the old fly swatter.
The war on bugs has become more sophisticated since those days. Every summer, displays of deadly chemicals appear in the local hardware store. The labels read like an arms dealer's convention: KILL, STOP, DESTROY, TERMINATE. The subliminal message is that we are mighty and powerful; they are tiny and powerless. It’s asymmetrical warfare, the ideal kind of war for those who prefer not to lose. But how asymmetrical is it? The odds seem to be entirely on our side, so why are we so dramatically failing to win?
Well, numbers may have something to do with it. There are more than 700,000 species of insects, and many of the more formidable ones are moving up from the south as the planet warms. Ants, roaches, silverfish, beetles, ticks, flies, hornets, wasps, earwigs, centipedes, moths, and fleas all come to our little territory for their summer holidays. They are not impressed by our sprays and foggers, baits and powders. They have been around for two hundred million years, and there are a lot more of them than there are of us.
Insects are survivors. They adapt like viruses to anything we can throw at them, and even the most potent chemicals are getting less effective. Some, like DDT and chlordane, have been banned for years. But now that all safety regulations are being repealed in the name of corporate profits, it seems likely that nothing, up to and including the nuclear option, will be banned in the future. But it may be too late. Just as we humans have undermined our resistance by overdosing on antibiotics, we may have toughened up the insect population with decades of toxic doses, which were almost, but not quite, one hundred per cent effective. As any epidemiologist will tell you, it's the "not quite" that matters. Not to put too fine a point on it, the insects are winning this contest. We may even be breeding a race of super bugs, like those in the old sci-fi movies.
It's a tough decision, whether to continue the losing battle, or live and let live. It may not be too late to go back to the old methods - the fly swatter and the briskly stamping foot. There is no good choice. What Winston Churchill said about General Montgomery may well be applied to our fellow creatures, the insects: "In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable."
