Harmonicas--Enemies of the Medfly?

After a year of living dangerously with Medflies and malathion, there are some people around the country who wonder why the state has yet to unleash a powerful secret weapon against the pest--the harmonica.

As careful readers of the Farmer’s Almanac know, the sound of the instrument’s lower F-sharp imitates the mating call of the Mediterranean fruit fly, which will supposedly follow the sound to the ends of the earth--or at least out of the county.

If that doesn’t work, another would-be eradicator has volunteered, try psychotronics. This is a technique that relies on satellite photos to focus psychic energy against people, places or things. Its creator claims that properly channeled psychic forces can eliminate just about any bug on the planet.

Since the beginning of Southern California’s Medfly infestation a year ago, a steady flow of high-tech, low-tech, no-tech and whoa!- tech ideas on killing the flies have trickled into eradication headquarters.

The ideas have included giant bug-killing street lights, genetically engineered wingless female flies, fly-killing bacteria and a variety of psychic methods.

The state instead has pressed on with its strategy of battling the tiny bug with a massive $40-million campaign of spraying malathion and, more recently, releasing sterile Medflies.

With a flurry of new Medfly discoveries this month, raising questions about the effectiveness of the malathion tactic, some critics of the eradication effort have begun to wonder seriously if it’s time to try some alternative strategies.

And as outlandish as harmonicas might sound, the history of Medfly eradication, in fact, has been dotted with discoveries that once were laughed off by experts.

Nearly 90 years ago, an 8-year-old Australian farm girl discovered the first sex lure used to attract the pests to poison--kerosene--after her mother daubed the chemical on a hitching post in an attempt to keep ants away from some cooling homemade jam (the ants stayed away, but Medflies swarmed the post).

One of the greatest innovations--the use of sterile insects--was jeered by entomologists for decades before it was finally proven to be effective in the 1950s.

Even today, dumb luck and serendipity remain valuable tools in the development of new fly-killing weapons, said Roy Cunningham, a U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist and one of the world’s leading experts on the Medfly.

Cunningham said the search for a lure to attract the Medfly has continued for decades, relying primarily on trial and error. Entomologists have tested tens of thousands of compounds as possible lures including coffee, roses and lemon-scented furniture polish.

“We don’t think anything is too bizarre because of our ignorance about the Medfly,” Cunningham said.

Federal officials, however, have yet to try the harmonica, which under the Farmer’s Almanac theory could be used to lure the pest from Los Angeles.

A tiny article in the 1981 Farmer’s Almanac, a booklet given away at banks, hardware stores and real estate offices, reported that “scientists have discovered that the mating call of the Mediterranean fruit fly has exactly the same frequency as lower F sharp on the harmonica.”

Lee James, former president of Hohner Inc., the world’s largest producer of harmonicas, related in 1981 that the discovery was made by a German scientist named K. Rolli, who was then working at the Agricultural Research Institute of Tunisia.

Rolli wanted to match the mating signal of the Medfly and discovered by chance that his daughter’s melodica--a close cousin of the harmonica--provided a perfect match. Rolli wrote to Hohner in 1974 about his discovery and the company’s main factory in West Germany responded by sending the scientist 10 melodicas to test his theory. That was the last anyone ever heard of the experiment.

The U.S. government has done extensive research on Medfly sounds. Derrell Chambers, a U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist, worked for 10 years recording, synthesizing and analyzing every sound made by the Medfly.

“We never saw anything that could be called an attractant,” he said, although some sounds did seem to increase the fly’s enthusiasm for sex.

Few of the suggestions sent to agriculture officials generate more than a polite letter of thanks.

Los Angeles County Agricultural Commissioner E. Leon Spaugy said people have proposed pulling out all of the fruit trees in Southern California and distributing malathion to individual homeowners so they can spray their property themselves. He said one person wrote that the infestation was being caused by state workers planting flies to maintain “job security.”

One notion that gave Spaugy pause was a suggestion that workers place loudspeakers throughout the infested territory and play acid rock music at extremely high volumes.

“The idea is that it would get rid of the fly and everything else with it,” Spaugy said. “That one I tend to believe.”

Some volunteer eradicators have chosen not to wait for official sanction. Charles F. Whitehouse of Paradise Valley, Ariz., said he already has begun using a technique called psychotronics to treat Southern California for the Medfly.

Whitehouse’s method, based on the 90-year-old field of radionics, relies on a dial-festooned machine activated by a plate that the operator rubs to generate a squeaky tone. The machine, he said, allows the operator to focus psychic energy around the planet.

“Distance in the mind does not exist,” said Whitehouse, 63, a former chiropractor.

By using photographs of people, places or things, Whitehouse said he is able to transmit energy to various parts of the globe. “I’ve got a whole section of Canton, China, under treatment right now,” he said.

Whitehouse started treating Southern California to eradicate the Medfly in May.

“My gift to the people of L.A.,” he said.

Since then, five female Medflies have been discovered in Los Angeles County--a problem he blamed on having a photo of only a male Medfly to work with.

Sherman Hostetter Sr. of Beaver Falls, Pa., has been trying to sell the state on a less esoteric means of zapping the Medfly.

His solution is a device that converts an ordinary street light into a bug killing machine. The street light attracts flying insects, which are then killed by a electrified wire mesh attached to the light.

“This baby’ll kill ‘em by the millions,” said Hostetter, a 63-year-old auctioneer and home inventor who has been trying to sell the state on the device.

He figures his insect-zapping conversion kit for street lights would cost no more than $20 a light. “Hardly anything at all,” he said.

There’s is one hitch: Medflies, according to experts, are not attracted by light. And they don’t fly at night.

“I didn’t know that,” Hostetter said. He seemed despondent after hearing the news. “If they don’t go for the light,” he mused, “that could be rough.”

MEDFLY SPRAYING MAPS: B8