Eastern Iowans Are Buzzing About Bugs

By Jill Kasparie, Reporter

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By Jay Knoll

Story Created: Jun 26, 2012 at 10:52 PM CDT

Story Updated: Jun 27, 2012 at 2:25 AM CDT

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – It seems Mother Nature is doing everything out of the ordinary this year. We’ve seen a warmer than normal winter, an early spring and now a dry summer. While some may love this warm, dry weather, it’s bugging many others.

Randy Barber has worked in the pest business for about ten years. He said, this year, isn’t like the rest. The crew at Quality Pest Control is working around the clock. “Right now we’re booked up to about a week and half over,” said Quality Pest Control Sales Manager Randy Barber.

The crew says they’ve seen an abundance of gnats, ants and spiders. Randy calculates that the number of calls from people who need help with bugs is up 60 percent. “It’s worse and the reason why it’s worst is we didn’t have no winter. We only had one week of frozen weather,” Barber said.

It’s not just Barber seeing the uptick. People, like Linda Mohr, enjoying time at Ellis Park are buzzing about it. “I’ve noticed that there are a lot more bugs, especially spiders and crickets, a lot of people are talking about the crickets,” Mohr said.

There is, however, one insect you likely won’t see among the rest, mosquitoes. Many experts thought Iowa would have a lot of them with the early onset of warm spring weather.

Linn County Health’s Jim Hodina said without any rain, the mosquitoes are few and far between. “What they really need is water, moisture to breed and to populate. As we now know, it’s pretty dry out so we haven’t seen that activity either,” Hodina said.

Even without the mosquitoes, those who work to rid homes and yards of bugs know it’ll be a long summer ahead.

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