日批在线视频_内射毛片内射国产夫妻_亚洲三级小视频_在线观看亚洲大片短视频_女性向h片资源在线观看_亚洲最大网

   

Ladybugs help city as pest killers

(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-10-22 15:31

NEW YORK -- It sounds like a horror movie: 720,000 ladybugs on the attack in Manhattan.


The fountain and park inside Stuyvesant Town is seen in this Aug. 30, 2006 file photo in New York. Groundskeepers at one of New York's biggest apartment complexes released the red-and-black creatures into the greenery Thursday, Oct. 18, 2007, on the sprawling 40-acres of high rises on the East Side to harm and destroy pests infesting the neatly landscaped property. [Agencies]

In this real life story, however, the red-and-black bugs have been unleashed on the 80-acre grounds of one of New York's biggest apartment complexes with a mission: eat pests infesting the neatly landscaped property.

The ladybugs from Bozeman, Mont., arrived at the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village complex on Manhattan's East Side on Thursday afternoon, packed in boxes shipped by a natural gardening company.

From mesh bags filled with wood shavings, groundskeepers scattered them in clusters of 72,000 per box. The ladybugs quickly took to the skies of the 80-acre rental complex.

In the next days and weeks, they will crawl into plants, flowers and shrubs in search of insects whose smell attracts them -- soft-bodied, leaf-sucking aphids and mites.

Buying the bugs means the complex's owner, Tishman Speyer, can avoid using chemical insecticides.

"In most cases, we reach for a can of pesticide -- and we kill not only the 'bad guys,' but the 'good guys,'" said Eric Vinje, owner of Planet Natural, which supplied the pest-killers for Manhattan.

"All we're doing here is putting more of the 'good guys' to tip the scale," he said.

On its Web site, the company offers "Live Ladybugs -- Free Shipping!" at $16.50 for 2,000.

This species of ladybug -- Hippodamia convergens -- converges in the wilderness, where they are harvested.

Vinje buys them from ladybug collectors working the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in Oregon, California and Montana.

In Bozeman, he keeps them alive in large refrigerators where the temperature is kept to about 35 degrees.

They go "dormant" at that temperature, using up their fat stores without eating anything, and staying alive for about five months, Vinje said.

In the shipping boxes, they slowly awaken while flying to a buyer's destination. By the time they reached Manhattan, "they were lively and ready to eat anything that was not too quick for them," Vinje said.

Vinje said 720,000 ladybugs are about the right number to clean up the New York complex.

Each insect can take care of a piece of land measuring about 19-by-19-inches. A ladybug can eat up to 50 pests a day, plus insect eggs. The huge colony will consume billions of pests before moving on.

Apartment residents need not worry about confronting swarms of ladybugs, since this is not the Asian ladybug typically spotted in urban areas. "This one is not prone to entering homes," Vinje said.

Plus, if one buys into a common superstition, the 720,000 ladybugs should bring a torrent of good luck.



Top World News  
Today's Top News  
Most Commented/Read Stories in 48 Hours
主站蜘蛛池模板: 激情婷婷 | 中字av在线 | 神马久久久久久久久久 | 日韩欧美区 | 日韩精品视频中文字幕 | 在线观看国产黄色 | 久久人人爽人人 | 亚洲久久天堂 | 国产在线不卡av | 丁香激情综合 | 久久亚洲精品国产 | 免费av高清 | 国产精品1区2区3区4区 | 欧美激情一二三区 | 在线观看第一页 | 欧美日韩亚洲国产成人 | 69国产精品视频免费观看 | 日本中文字幕在线免费观看 | 欧洲精品在线观看 | 国产午夜精品久久久久久久久 | 都市激情男人天堂 | 亚日韩 | av网站观看 | 久久av一区 | 99日韩精品| 好吊妞精品视频 | 成人午夜毛片 | 女人的天堂网站 | 亚洲毛片在线观看 | 精品一区二区av | 亚洲一区二区三区视频在线 | 国产精品视频在线播放 | 99热这里只有精品在线观看 | 狠狠干中文字幕 | 亚洲一| 免费成人高清在线视频 | 欧美视频免费在线观看 | 日韩精品1区| 一二三在线视频 | 日韩在线影院 | 咪咪av|