Rudman's city: Squirt the mozzies and we'll be queuing up to be sprayed

By BRIAN RUDMAN

As the countdown begins out west for next Saturday's aerial assault on the painted apple moth, I can't help thinking that the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has got the propaganda war all wrong.

It's hard to persuade people to lie back an enjoy being aerially bombarded with an insecticide called Btk when the target is a cute hairy caterpillar that just may be lurking in your backyard and has done you no harm.

What the boffins should have done is laced the Btk with its cousin Bti, and declared war on mosquitoes as well.

If they'd done that they would have been heroes. People like myself would have been demanding they widen the drop zone to include our backyards.

When my house guest from Wellington presented me with a mosquito coil the size of a truck suspension spring last Friday, I accepted it in the spirit it was given. This was no Auckland put-down, it was a simple act of self-preservation. The giver had sat in my backyard of a summer evening in the past and knew how painful it could be for the unprepared.

Me? Well I was like a Maori warrior handling his first musket. With this huge device I could dream of ruling the world - well regaining my backyard anyway. That's if the rain stopped long enough to get the thing lit.

My garden is apparently ideal for mozzies. Partly by design, partly by neglect, the lush growth provides the shady resting spaces the adult insects love. Water-collecting bamboo and the like provide the breeding spaces. This summer's endless rain has exacerbated the problem.

Squadrons of these flying hypodermic needles lie in wait, making even a quick dash to the compost heap, a perilous exercise.

It's all enough to make me long for the good old days when council staff prowled the streets with backpacks of DDT. Or is that a faded memory of backpacking days in the tropics? Whichever, it did the trick.

Another alternative would be to persuade the Ministry of Health that the dreaded Aussie southern saltmarsh mozzies had hopped harbours and settled in central Auckland.

Those are the invaders, capable of carrying Ross River fever, that have been occupying harbours on the West Coast - the latest being Kaipara.

But considering the time it's taken to get a spraying programme started there, I suspect my ankles would have fallen off before the health professionals got into action.

The other option is do-it-yourself. Smearing and spraying unctions on the body works, but it's a messy process and not all guests appreciate a quick massage of their exposed parts before entering the backyard - well not before a drink or two anyway. And by then it's too late.

The little green coils are okay, but fiddly and accident-prone. As for those flares on the end of bamboo poles, they throw out a kerosene-smelling smokescreen so putrid that not only the mosquitoes, but you and the guests have to decamp as well.

Strangely there seem to be no DIY-sized retail containers of the magic Bti, the stuff the experts merrily squirt across the countryside from planes and backpacks. What a missed opportunity.

It's not as though it's dangerous, not according to Health Ministry propaganda anyway. Chief technical officer Dr Bob Boyd says Bti has been used all over the world and has undergone a full health impact assessment, which shows it is not allergenic or otherwise dangerous to us or our plants.

So can I buy it for my own use? Only, it seems, in 10-litre containers costing more than $200. That, the experts tell me, is an awful lot of something that has to be diluted anyway.

Another product is also in the wings. Instead of poisoning the wrigglers as Bti does, this spray puts a one-molecule-thick film across the water surface, presumably starving the larvae of oxygen. This has been registered for use here, but like Bti, is not yet on the garden-shop shelves.

I wish they'd hurry up. Either of them.

Meanwhile I'm waiting for a calm, dry night to light my monster coil.