VISITATION RITES: THE Southern California Tourist Experience : Inspectors Snoop to Keep the Bugs Out of California

The desert heat was rolling off California 62 in lazy, shimmering waves. Tourist Lyndon DeWitt was rolling just as lazily out of Arizona when he was unexpectedly waved down.

The visitor from Keene, Tex., was directed to pull his camper truck over to a rickety-looking shack and stop behind a 30-foot motor home bearing Alaska plates.

DeWitt watched in amazement at what happened next at this sleepy desert crossroads 210 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

A grandmotherly woman wearing a khaki shirt and shorts tossed a mechanic’s creeper onto the ground. With a practiced kick, she scooted on it beneath the Alaska RV and disappeared from view.

Was she looking for the motorist’s worst summertime enemy in the stifling Mojave Desert--a clogged air-conditioner line? Was she hunting for an oil leak? For illegal drugs?

“Pests,” Rose Mary Walker explained to RV owner Dan Kohler as she rolled from under the coach. “This is a pest exclusion station. . . . Do you have any fruit or vegetables inside?”

If Kohler was carrying apples or peaches for his family to snack on as they motored across the barren desert, the fruit would have to be confiscated and destroyed.

If they were traveling with a family pet such as a ferret, monk parakeet or hamster, they would be sent back across the Colorado River if they refused to surrender the creature.

If red fire ants were discovered crawling around their RV’s galley, the expensive luxury coach would be banned from the state until it was fumigated.

Welcome to California.

“I’ve lived in the U.S. nearly all my life and never seen anything like this,” DeWitt said. “You can go all over Texas and never see anything like this. I don’t see how necessary this is.”

Such vigilance is plenty necessary in a state where agriculture is the chief industry, say California officials. They have assigned 150 inspectors to check tourists this summer at 16 roadside stations on California’s borders with Oregon, Nevada and Arizona.

Twenty-seven insects and plants ranging from the Mexican fruit fly to oak firewood have been banned. Officials worry that a single carload of bugs or diseased plants could spark an infestation that could threaten segments of California’s $62-billion agriculture business.

Inspectors closely check cars with northeastern license plates for signs of gypsy moth eggs. Vehicles from the southeastern U.S. are inspected for fire ants. Every driver is asked about fruit.

During the 12-month period that ended July 1, 26.3 million vehicles--90% of them cars--were stopped at the state’s border stations, officials say. Uncounted tons of fruits and vegetables were seized. About 127,000 vehicles, mostly trucks, were prohibited from entering the state.

Truckers familiar with weigh stations and highway patrol inspections across America are philosophical about California’s unusual agriculture checkpoints. But tourists are sometimes a different matter.

“They’re the ones who get upset and give us a hard time,” said Robert Granger, an inspector at the tiny inspection station at Vidal Junction.

Some accuse inspectors of stealing their fruit, said Walker, 52.

“They think we eat it after they leave. We don’t. We cut it up and then bag it and dump it. There’s very few fruits that I’ll eat after this job. You wouldn’t believe what we find.”

When she recently checked a motor home from Utah, Walker confiscated a grocery sack of cherries being eaten by a boy riding in the back. She explained that the cherries might contain fruit flies.

“The kid’s mother yelled, ‘You’re taking the food out of my child’s mouth,’ ” Walker recalled. “When I got outside I popped one of the cherries open and inside there were five or six maggots. All I could think about was that kid popping those cherries into his mouth.”

Inspecting a Florida car last year, Walker discovered two rattlesnakes, six constrictor snakes listed on Florida’s endangered species list, tarantulas and illegal cactus plants. The creatures were in large jars hidden beneath a foam pad. Two children were asleep on top of the pad, she said.

She sent the car back to Arizona, where authorities apprehended the adults in the car on a cactus-stealing charge. Florida officials later extradited them for stealing the snakes.

The Vidal Junction station is the state’s tiniest--and funkiest--agricultural checkpoint. It is located at the intersection of California 62 and U.S. 95. Blythe is 46 miles to the south. Needles is 47 miles to the north. Parker, Ariz., is 17 miles to the east.

Its clapboard inspector’s shack has been in continuous operation since 1937. It was used as a backdrop for the classic 1940 movie, “The Grapes of Wrath.”

These days it is still shaded by an old-fashioned wooden overhang. Its one-room office is cooled by an ancient window air conditioner that is also continuously operated.

“We don’t know how hot it gets,” said Granger, 46. “One of our thermometers blew away. The other one broke a couple of weeks ago when it red-lined at 122 degrees. Motorists told us they’d seen a bank thermometer in Parker that read 127 that day.”

Most times during the day, inspectors at Vidal Junction work alone, hurrying between the right side of the station, where trucks stop to be checked, and the left side, where cars and RVs are halted.

During the nighttime, the inspectors are really on their own.

The gas station, grocery store and cafe that share the desert crossroads are closed. The lone California Highway Patrol officer assigned to the region is off duty. Traffic is sparse.

That’s when smugglers try to sneak past the remote outpost with loads of mangoes or walnuts. Or truckloads of illegal aliens or illicit drugs.

“Our people are not peace officers,” said Martina Haleamau, who heads the state’s pest exclusion office in Sacramento. “Drugs and illegal aliens are not under our authority. We don’t want our employees involved in that.”

Agricultural smugglers are subject to $10,000 fines, Haleamau said. “We recognize that the normal person doesn’t like inspection, that it’s a negative to them. We try to explain how important it is.”

Most tourists seem to understand the need to protect California’s agriculture--no matter how sparse the natural sagebrush vegetation around Vidal Junction seems.

“We were surprised, but it doesn’t bother us,” said Paula Reneau of Auburn, Ala., who passed through the inspection station with her husband, Wayne.

Said William Becker of Williamsport, Penn., who exited his air-conditioned car to open his trunk for Granger: “This is something they have to do.”

Even Kohler, the driver of the RV given the undercarriage once-over by Walker, said he appreciated the vigilance. He said he lives in Cherry Valley, Calif., and recently purchased the motor home from an Alaskan couple.

“We’ve come through these stations a bunch of times,” he said. “It’s worthwhile to catch the people who sneak stuff in.”

Texan DeWitt decided the same thing after the procedure was explained to him and he passed inspection.

“If they’re looking for something like the Medfly, I guess it’s important,” he said.