Creepy-Crawly Neighbors

At the 'Bughouse' in Md. Suburb, Insects Are Primary Residents

At Insect Control & Research in Catonsville, Md., director Robin G. Todd, left, and mosquito technician Fouad Zgidou look at some specimens. (Photos By Michael Robinson-chavez -- The Washington Post)

CATONSVILLE, Md. -- Some neighbors call it the bughouse. And for good reason. An estimated 70,000 or more bugs live inside the place, tucked here in a residential neighborhood.

There are cockroaches, ants, beetles, lice, bedbugs, mosquitoes, moths, mites and more -- all crawling and flying through glass and mesh cages.

Eight entomologists and their assistants tend to them, walking among a warren of small rooms. The scientists use the bugs to test the latest insecticides, bug-snuffing gizmos and repellents mailed in from pest-control companies across the country.

The firm, Insect Control & Research Inc., has been around 59 years. Another half-dozen such companies exist. But with zoning laws and industrial parks and people leery of differences next door, it's hard to imagine a bug lab so quietly doing its business on a suburban street.

"I don't really understand what they do. I just know they do bug research," says Jim Morsberger, who for 20 years has lived across the street from the two-story red-brick building 40 miles north of Washington.

Morsberger recalls one issue with a loud burglar alarm and another with an errant snowplow operator, but he came away from each incident mostly struck by how quickly the scientists corrected anything intrusive. "Corporate-wise, you don't know those guys exist, except to say, 'Hey, how are you?' " Morsberger says.

One reason for the coexistence is that Insect Control & Research predates many residents. It was formed in 1946 by entomologist Eugene J. Gerberg. He had just returned from the war, serving as commanding officer of a malaria detachment in the Pacific, where his duties included finding mosquito breeding areas and making sure soldiers used repellents and took pills.

In Maryland, he faced an early land-use spat but says he came out properly zoned. During the Vietnam War, working inside the building, he kept mosquitoes infected with bird malaria for government testing. The mosquitoes were housed in screened cages. He backed up those with a series of adjoining rooms, four layers deep, each with screening material and doors.

"Our lab was the one the government sent people to see good mosquito security," Gerberg, 86, says in an interview from Gainesville, Fla., where he is an adjunct professor of medical entomology at the University of Florida.

The bird malaria mosquitoes are long gone, but the strange layout remains. Scientists negotiate mazelike turns going about their business. Drab colors adorn cinder-block walls. The upstairs paneling is dingy. But the building is oddly clean, with few if any stray bugs walking the cement and tile floors.

One night in the early 1990s, though, about 50 black imperial scorpions purchased from a supplier slipped from their buckets. They probably stood up on the sides of the buckets, knocking them over. Robin G. Todd, who succeeded Gerberg as director, remembers arriving to see an assistant holding a pair of tweezers. "We've got a bunch of loose scorpions," the assistant said.

The scorpions were not lethal, but a sting could ruin anyone's day, Todd says. The scorpions were contained to a bug-rearing room and eventually were accounted for. (The lab doesn't regularly keep scorpions.) Todd, 57, grew up in England. Married with two children, he presides over a small Howard County homeowners association in his spare time. He gave a reporter a tour through the lab one day last month.