Moths bug county workers

Wednesday, June 4, 2003 | 9:34 a.m.

The County Government Center is full of bugs.

Not the kind installed by the FBI in its probe of suspected political corruption -- at least as far as employees know. Instead, thousands of moths have invaded the sandstone edifice near downtown.

Live moths are landing in open cups of coffee, people's hair, windows and light fixtures. Dead ones crowd doorways and squish underfoot.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Don Burnette, the county's director of administrative services. Burnette is responsible for keeping the county building clean, and county staff have been busy over the last several weeks sweeping up the dead moths.

"It's fairly obvious they are taking over the building," agreed Barbara King, with the county's human resources office.

Reports from reliable sources said Virginia Valentine, deputy county manager, created a new coffee brew she dubbed "moth-uccino" when she returned to her open cup and found a half-dozen of the insects doing backstrokes.

The moths flying in and around the county building are not the fault of bad housekeeping, said an observer of invertebrates -- a bug guy -- at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

"The reason we have them is because we had a nice, wettish spring, so we had lots of weeds," said Will Pratt, curator of invertebrates at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Natural History.

They eat natural and domestic plants, especially weeds and other greens such as desert mustard plant that grow in vacant lots, Pratt said. But they don't eat people, he said.

He said the moths -- called army cutworm moths, from the army cutworm caterpillar -- are coming out all over the Las Vegas area. Pratt said people can spray insecticide, but it will not do much to control the problem since the moths are flying into buildings from vacant lots nearby.

"You can spray them heavily and kill the ones that are there, but that isn't going to do a thing about the ones that come tomorrow night."

Some sprays can be dangerous to people and he urged anyone who does turn to insecticides to follow the directions carefully.

"Develop a tolerance is the best advice," he said. People often overreact to natural events that affect human places, such as big government buildings.

Pratt said he doesn't believe the bugs will be around for long. Inside a building, they will usually die within a day or two.

The hot weather and lack of new rainfall will likely end the problem altogether within a couple of weeks, he said.

"As things dry out, we're not likely to get any new large broods."

Burnette said he already sees the day when the light at the end of the tunnel will not be surrounded by fluttering insects.

"Their numbers have sharply dropped off according to my nonscientific observations over the last several days," he said. "Let Mother Nature take its course."

"As long at they're not eating my clothes," said Carolyn Burke, a spokeswoman for the Comprehensive Planning Department.