Saturday, September 17, 2016

BUGS OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS

A recent survey of urban and suburban houses in a North Carolina city found that homes in neighborhoods having higher average incomes had a greater variety of arthropods living in them as "house guests."* In case you have forgotten your high school science, arthropods include insects, spiders, crustaceans and other invertebrate critters with an exoskeleton, segmented body, and jointed appendages. A more scientific name for these things is "bugs."

The survey found that an average household had more than 100 bug species living in the house. However, there was no report of shrimp living in a basement. Among the more popular insect occupants, gall midge flies were found in 100% of homes, fungus gnats in 96% and cockroaches in 74%. Frankly, my vote for most popular would be for the spiders and their arachnid friends. It was reported that this was the first evidence of a link between wealth and greater diversity of bugs in houses. Apparently, climate change is not a factor.

As one might expect, there has been litigation over residential bugs. For example, there have been several cases involving bedbugs in hotel rooms, apartments and rental mattresses. There even is a case where love was lost when a tennis player fell stepping on a dead cicada.

An interesting case involved the purchase of a mobile home by a man and his fiancé who intended it to be their abode after their wedding. Upon their return from a honeymoon, they "found their trailer full of bugs 'hatched all over the trailer' and 'packed on the floor.'" Subsequently, "they observed bugs in the bedroom walls behind the paneling, in the insulation underneath the trailer, in the cabinets, the tub, on the curtains, and all over their home."

The couple hired an exterminator, who identified the bugs as "confused grain beetles." Several treatments did not solve the problem. The couple moved out of their home and sued the seller to get their money back. A witness for the seller stated that the bugs were "confused flour beetles", not "confused grain beetles", and that they could be exterminated successfully. Whatever, one wonders how the bugs would have been were they not confused.

The Appellate Court affirmed the trial court's decision for the bugged couple, stating "there is really very little question but that a mobile home infested with beetles in the numbers described by plaintiff and his wife is unfit for use as a residence. Persons of ordinary sensibilities would not want to live under such conditions as were shown to have existed in this mobile home..."**

While wealth may foster residential bug diversity, too many bugs may eat away at wealth. Perhaps, it is the bugs one sees that are the problem. The bugs you do not see are not a problem, unless they bite you.

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*Milius,"Richer Homes Host More Kinds of Bugs,"
Science News, Sept.3, 2016, p.15

**Sauers v. Tibbs, 363 N.E.2d 444(Ill.App.)1977

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