Bug Trappers Man Front Lines in the War Against Crop Pests : Infestations: With about 5,000 traps, a county crew watches for insects that threaten the state’s $16-billion agriculture industry.

Linda Bellamy poured a jug of cloudy brown water into a plastic strainer. When the water had drained off, she turned a practiced eye on the residue of about a dozen dead insects. The stench of fermented yeast from the water sliced through the air in a rustic Ojai neighborhood.

“We’ve got some native fruit flies, a few ants, and trash flies. Nothing exotic,” she said, dumping the soggy bugs into a five-gallon container of water topped with other floating flies.

Bellamy’s business is bugs. Her job title is insect detection specialist II, but most people call her a trapper. A bug trapper.

Hers is not a career for the squeamish.

Bellamy supervises 11 trappers and one assistant supervisor under the Ventura County agricultural commissioner. Her crew maintains about 5,000 traps in Ventura County. Every trap is checked at least once every two weeks.

Bellamy and her trappers are on the front lines of California’s war against the Mediterranean, Mexican and Oriental fruit flies, gypsy moths, Japanese beetles and the other pests that constantly threaten the state’s $16-billion agriculture industry.

“The potential for about six fruit flies, one moth and one beetle to affect that industry is tremendous,” said Pat Minyard of the state Pest Detection Emergency Programs.

Trappers are the “unheralded sentinels” against insect infestations, said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau. He said an infestation that spreads undetected can cost millions of dollars in crop damage and eradication programs.

Although Ventura County has never had an infestation, the 1989-90 Medfly infestation in other parts of the state cost $63 million to eradicate. The scare persuaded the state to nearly double its Medfly trapping program the following year.

“You could check a lot of traps for $63 million,” Laird said. With early detection, authorities can often control an infestation without the expensive--and unpopular--aerial spraying of insecticides.

The word trapper summons up an image of a grizzled outdoorsman in the Yukon leading a dog team through the snow in search of beaver and mink.

But Bellamy wears blue jeans, ankle socks and sneakers. She traps out of a county-owned pickup truck that has run up more than 30,000 miles in 1 1/2 years.

Trap lines run through people’s orchards and farms, their flower gardens and fruit trees, their back yards and their stables. The perils that these trappers face include suspicious dogs and riled wasps.

“Some of these people have geese,” she said as she walked past a pen of ducks and roosters. “And they will attack.”

The county’s $419,000 trapping program is part of an $8-million statewide insect detection program involving about 50,000 traps, Minyard said. The California Department of Food and Agriculture pays the cost.

The current Medfly infestation in San Jose was discovered by a trapper who found five flies in a trap in a plum tree, Minyard said.

The trappers use the age-old lures of food and sex.

The food is pellets of borax and protein-rich yeast dissolved in water. The smelly concoction is designed to be a Mexican fruit fly’s last supper.

As for sex, few male Medflies or gypsy moths can resist pheromone “perfumes” that simulate the sex hormones emitted by their females.

Trapping bugs can be lonely, tedious and low-paying. Bellamy, with nine years experience, earns about $10 an hour for a four-day, 40-hour work week. But she likes the job because it frees her from boring paperwork and pesky bosses. Her friends envy the time she spends outdoors.

“They can’t believe somebody actually goes out and looks for flies,” Bellamy said.

Most traps are triangular cardboard tubes with glue-covered “sticky boards” on the bottoms. The insects, lured by the scent, get stuck in the glue.

To nab Mexican fruit flies, trappers use a McPhail trap. The trap--no connection to county Agricultural Commissioner Earl McPhail--is a glass jug with an opening at the base that forms a doughnut-shaped well. Bellamy fills the well with water in which she dissolves the yeast pellets.

As supervisor, Bellamy no longer runs her own trap line but fills in when needed. One recent morning, she was in Ojai taking over for a vacationing trapper.

Bellamy’s first stop was on Boardman Road. The trapper’s carefully drawn map directed her up a driveway and down a path that went beside someone’s home and behind a stable to a clump of fruit trees in a shallow gully.

In seconds, Bellamy found a Medfly trap dangling from a high branch of a fruit tree. She hauled it down with a 6-foot pole and peered inside.

The sticky board was coated with dust but no flies. She dropped a new pheromone lure inside, replaced the board and rehung the trap.

On her way out, she rubbed a friendly horse on the nose and gripped her pole as she eyed a growling German shepherd.

The peach tree, Bellamy explained, was chosen for a reason.

“Medflies love peaches and nice, soft fleshy fruits,” she said.

The trap is close to Soule Park, the kind of place where an infestation could begin. Medflies are always brought in by humans carrying contaminated fruit.

“People go to Mexico, they bring back mangoes, sapotes, tropical fruits. They save them for a picnic or a special day, find the fruit has worms in it, and throw it away. That’s how infestations start.”

Bellamy said she has learned to be discreet as she clambers across people’s yards to check her traps. She’s come across marijuana gardens, and overheard folks engaged in private acts that they probably would stop if they knew she was there.

“I don’t care what you have in your back yard, I don’t care what you do in your house,” she said. “I’m just here to check for bugs.”

All “finds” are taken to the agricultural commissioner’s office in Santa Paula for closer inspection.

Most of the Medflies and Mexican fruit flies that are caught are harmless--sterile males that are bred and released by the millions to check breeding. They have a distinctive marking that can be detected under an ultraviolet light.

A few bugs are ringers, planted by quality control inspectors to ensure trappers are doing their jobs, Bellamy said.

When a wild fly is caught, trappers put it on the next plane to Sacramento, where state dipterists, or fly specialists, confirm the find.

The state will launch an eradication program if trappers find two males within three miles of one another, a female that has already mated, eggs or larvae, Minyard said.

“It’s a lot of work when we find something,” Bellamy said.

The last find in Ventura County cost Bellamy her Fourth of July holiday.

On June 30, trapper Michael Deen found a male Oriental fruit fly in Simi Valley. The trap was in a homeowner’s apricot tree.

When state officials verified the find the next day, Bellamy and her crew went into action.

They installed 45 traps within one mile of the tree. Through the holiday weekend and the days beyond, Bellamy and other trappers checked the traps every day.

It proved to be an isolated find. No eradication program was needed.

In Ojai, Bellamy walked onto front lawns and estates, a Christmas tree farm and a ranch owned by Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino (R-Ventura). She didn’t find any bugs that didn’t belong.

It would have been a surprise if she had.

As Ventura County’s senior trapper, Bellamy has checked dozens of traps every day for nine years. She’s driven almost every road in the county, gone through trailer parks and movie stars’ estates, and matter-of-factly disposed of countless yucky critters.

Yet she has never trapped one of the feared insects she searches for so diligently.

“It’s always been one of the other trappers,” Bellamy said.

That, she admitted, really bugs her.