BUGS BRING HARBINGER OF AUTUMN

It's the time of year when an occasional cool, breezy day offers Southeast Missouri residents a taste of the approaching fall season.

But, according to area exterminators, it's also the time of year when tiny, multi-legged pests begin their annual home invasions.

This year's crop of late-summer insects includes dense populations of fleas, crickets, centipedes and poisonous brown recluse spiders.

Melvin Clark, manager of the Cape Girardeau Orkin Exterminating Co., said the brown recluse population seems to be unusually abundant this year.

"They're extremely heavy this year," Clark said. "The other bugs are pretty prevalent right now and they feed off other bugs, so it helps them flourish."

Clark said the long-legged brown recluse can best be identified by the violin-shaped marking on its back. "The old timers called it a fiddle spider," he said.

Although the brown recluse ~comes in various sizes, the smallest are just as poisonous as larger ones.

"Exterminators this time of year have gotten a very high number of calls regarding brown recluse spiders," Clark said. "Generally if they bite you, it starts deteriorating the skin away. It feels like a small sting, but it can rot the skin and leave a big scar.

"Very rarely, there is death from it when it's a young child or someone very old, but you could have an allergic reaction, which can be dangerous."

A spokesperson at Family Physician's Group in Doctor's Park said the clinic treated a few cases of brown recluse bites a "couple months ago," but hasn't had an extraordinary number of reported bites this year.

Clark said the spiders are aptly named. "They're very fast and they like to get back in areas like closets and attics," he said. "They're really kind of reclusive."

He said the brown recluse often crawls into clothing, shoes and sheets. "Then you put on your clothing and they bite you, or you roll over in bed on top of one," Clark said.

"It's very, very difficult to spray for them to bring them under control. Some people have moved completely out of homes because of problems with spiders."

Jerry Snell, owner of River Hills Pest Control, said the brown recluse is not uncommon to Southeast Missouri, or virtually anywhere else in the United States.

Dorothy Payne of General Pest Control in Cape Girardeau said brown recluse spiders have joined fleas as this year's number one pest problem.

"Fleas and the spiders are getting more numerous this time of year, as well as ants and crickets," she said.

"The fleas, through the summer months, are the biggest problem. Even people that don't have pets have flea problems."

Payne said one of the best ways to combat the fleas' invasion indoors is to spray a home's perimeter for the bugs.

"A lot of times during summer months we spray the shrubs, which will help control the mosquito and flea population as well as other insects," she said. "Just keeping the perimeter of the home sprayed really helps to keep the bugs from coming in the house."

Clark also said the fleas are a nuisance this year. "Fleas are bad this year, real bad," he said. "I would say probably fleas, roaches and spiders we get more calls from that now. But this is generally the high pest control month."

Clark said late summer and early fall is when such invaders move indoors to seek places to lie dormant for the winter months.

Last year at this time, the area was suffering through one of the worst flea infestations in years. Like 1990, a prolonged, wet spring this year provided ideal conditions for a thriving flea population.

Snell said other bugs, like centipedes and crickets also are abundant this time of year.

"These bugs all kind of run in cycles," he said. "I do a lot of work in Perry County and they've got what's called cave crickets that come up in the thousands. This year looks like it's going to be a bad year for them, along with the centipedes."

All the pest-control experts said calls for their services increase dramatically after rainfall.

Another pest that's familiar to anyone who spends evenings outdoors in Southeast Missouri is the mosquito. The city of Cape Girardeau has been fogging streets, particularly in low-lying or wet areas, since mid-May to try to bring the mosquito population under control.

Wayne Moore, the city's sewer line and stormwater foreman, supervises the bi-weekly foggings.

"We've had quite a few different areas in the city that had early high water during the wet spring, so we did have a pretty good batch of them," Moore said of the city's mosquito population.

"As every thing dries up, they're more congregated and it's a little easier to control them."

Moore said the city has battled the mosquitoes for several years throughout the entire town, but directs its efforts particularly in areas most susceptible to mosquitoes.

"If nothing else, we make sure we get the low-lying areas, like Sloan's Creek in Red Star, Cape LaCroix Creek, the ditches and tributaries," he said.