‘Maggot Man’ Wages Up-Close Battle on Pest : Infestation: While state entomologist searches back yards, residents gird for a double-dose of malathion.

State entomologist Lorin Bronson looked up Monday as he straddled a bucket full of slimy slices of persimmon and joked, “The kids call me the maggot man.”

Then Bronson returned to his thankless job of searching for creamy white and wiggling Medfly worms from fruit plucked from a tree on Mound Avenue in South Pasadena where three adult flies were discovered a week ago--the latest of half a dozen Medfly finds in Los Angeles County.

As a result of that find and an additional discovery in Alhambra, state and county officials have decided to spray a 22-square-mile area around the street of quaint 80-year-old wood-frame homes with the pesticide malathion--not once but twice.

The unusual double-shot of the paint-eating pesticide in an area that has never been sprayed before was ordered because pest control officials fighting infestations in six sectors of the county have temporarily run out of sterile Medflies. Normal procedures call for spraying an area with malathion and then releasing millions of sterile female flies, which overwhelm the males and breed them out of existence.

The first spraying is scheduled for Thursday night with the second to follow sometime over the next two weeks.

“We don’t have enough sterile Medflies for new areas where the infestation has emerged,” said Bob Atkins, Los Angeles County deputy agricultural commissioner in charge of pest prevention. “We’ve exceeded the capacity of our breeding center in Hawaii and we are now requesting sterile flies from Guatemala and Mexico.”

Bronson had all day to think about that and other aspects of the infestation as he cut and sliced more than 50 persimmons in a white plastic bucket.

“These maggots are disgusting, man. They live in their own digestive soup of bacteria and spoiled fruit,” Bronson said, peering at a gooey slice through a magnifying glass. “Me, I’m doing a public service. If this bug gets established in California, it’ll be here until the next ice age.”

Bert Carlisle, owner of the 50-year-old persimmon tree, has resigned himself to getting sprayed twice with pesticide.

“I’m picking persimmons like a son-of-a-gun and giving them away as quickly as I can,” said Carlisle, 49. “If it takes two shots of malathion to knock off the Medfly, no problem, I can handle that.”

Carlisle’s next-door neighbor, Leo Rakowski, was less certain about the effect the sprayings might have on a beehive he tends on the roof of his garage.

“All I ask is that they tell me the night before they spray so I can lock up my bees,” said Rakowski, 74, a prominent business owner in the area. “What else can I do?”

Bronson said, “Some bees will die from feeding on droplets of bait. But we’ve never lost a hive from spraying.”

Around the corner, the manager of a popular coffee shop that stays open until 2 a.m. daily pondered the prospect of getting sued by customers whose cars may be doused with droplets of pesticide.

“But we won’t close early, that’s for sure,” said Rick Harper, 26, manager of the Salt Shaker Restaurant, which has a parking lot that accommodates up to 80 cars. “I’m going to post a sign on the front door saying, ‘They’ll be spraying and I do recommend you cover your car.’ ”