Creepy-Crawly Neighbors

"This is the insectory. Hey, Fouad," he says, addressing Fouad Zgidou, a technician from Morocco.

Zgidou sits before a wire mesh cage. He snakes a hose into it, gently vacuuming up one mosquito at a time. He transfers them live into disposable cylinders, each about the size of a coffee cup and made of cardboard tubing, mesh screens and pliable dental dams that serve as sealable doorways. The cylinders are headed upstairs to a stainless steel gas chamber the size of a small backyard shed, which will be used to test a pulse-spray insecticide system akin to backyard sprinklers.

Adjacent to Zgidou's room is a long-running colony of body lice. Companies like Tec Laboratories Inc., in Albany, Ore., have counted on them. Several years ago, Tec Laboratories sent packages of its Licefreee! hair gel to see how it did on nits. "One hundred percent mortality," says the company's Maria Steckley, reading over a report pulled from her quality-control office.

Todd next heads into the Roach Room. Among the colonies lined up are Madagascar hissing roaches, which feed on smashed Purina rat chow. Keeping all specimens hearty is a lab hallmark, clients say, as is its breadth of bug offerings and detailed testing.

When the scientists test "roach bombs," which are used to fumigate large areas, they take the roaches to a large room with an observation window and place them in five-gallon buckets. The buckets can't be covered with mesh; that would impede the test. Researchers coat the inner bucket walls with margarine or mixes of kerosene and petroleum jelly, then set off the fogger. The roaches scramble but can't get out. The lab disposes of dead bugs in a regular dumpster.

After the Roach Room, Todd takes several sharp turns to the Fly Room, run by longtime employee Gloria Stevens. She dips a cotton swab into a container of bovine blood recently fetched from a nearby kosher slaughterhouse. She places the swab on the screened roof of a colony of stable flies. They swarm upward, munching through the screen.

"This is getting pretty old," she says, looking at a container of blood. "I need to get it fresh tomorrow."

Outside, neighbors will sometimes joke with Todd when they see him outside, referring to the "bughouse" or the "bug place." In general they have only a vague idea of what the lab does. "You don't see any clouds hovering over the building or anything," Morsberger says.

The bughouse isn't the only place where tests are run. In the early 1990s, companies told Todd they wanted field studies. He began rounding up local testers.

Rowland Bowers, 56, a home-improvement contractor, began going on trips in 1998 to supplement his income and spend time with tester friends like Dennis Bowers, his cousin. He has since traveled to Assateague Island, the deep woods of Maine, the Florida Everglades, Minnesota, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas, Oregon and Washington state. "The mosquitoes in Assateague are the worst. I personally think they bite harder," he says.

Bowers takes about four trips a year. He earns $11 an hour, mostly by sitting on a lawn chair, his body covered head to toe in double layers of clothing and netting -- save for an exposed patch of arm or leg that is treated with repellent.

Sometimes he gets a relatively ineffective repellent to test. After two bug bites -- as confirmed and timed by the scientists -- he is free to go for the day. When he gets a strong repellent, he can sit for as long as eight hours.

The testers enjoy the camaraderie. They are fed well, Bowers says, and have eaten lobster and moose in Maine. They generally get one paid day to see the local sights.

Back at the lab, Todd and his scientists raise so many bugs, they also sell them. They unloaded nearly two pounds of frozen mosquitoes for several thousand dollars to a company that collects allergenics that often end up in product development. And they have sold cockroach droppings as well, an enterprise that requires graded cage floors and a collection area. The scientists also consult for pest-control companies and help them with regulatory registrations.

But what people really want to hear at cocktail parties is how well various products work. Todd doesn't like ultrasonic noise devices, which ostensibly ward off bugs with high-pitched sounds. Nor does he like repellant-covered wristbands, which he says only protect wrists.

As for outdoor mosquito zappers, he says they tend to incinerate other kinds of bugs. "I think they're a complete waste of money," he says.

He generally likes DEET-based repellents.

Todd's business often increases after bad bug press. Recent attention has focused on bedbugs, which people can pick up at hotels. Todd recently lectured on the subject at the Entomological Society of America's annual convention in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Todd's lab has kept its own colony of bedbugs since 1983. For years, they were essentially unused. "It's kind of like wine," Todd says. "You put a bottle down and, low and behold, years later it produces a fine vintage."