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June 16-22, 2024 is National Mosquito Control Awareness Week! MMCD will be highlighting the various people that protect the public from disease and annoyance caused by mosquitoes, ticks, and black flies. Stay tuned to our website, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for updates throughout the week!
Mosquito Field Technicians at the Metropolitan Mosquito Control District are some of the most critical parts of our team. Each year around 180 seasonal employees join us as mosquito, catch basin, or lab technicians. These individuals come from a variety of backgrounds and career stages. Today we catch up with two field technicians from our East Facility:
Sarah Kroening and Larry Pearl, field technicians from the East Facility.
Sarah Kroening, Field Technician
Larry Pearl, Field Technician
How long have you been working here at MMCD?
LARRY: This is my 32nd season. 32 years.
SARAH: And then this is my third season. It's my second season in the field and the first one was in the lab.
How did you hear about MMCD?
LARRY: I think it was one of those job fairs or something that was on a billboard. And it said, “Metropolitan Mosquito Control District” and it was outdoors, and I'm an Outdoorsman. I like to hunt and fish. I love nature, I love wildlife, I like all that. Evidently that's why I keep coming back because I love the outdoors, you know, I mean, the mosquitoes can get bad in the summer and all that and some of the sites and all the grasses, I mean everything gets tall and harder to get into as the summer goes on but I just love being outdoors.
SARAH: So I was in college, and I was taking zoology and my professor, he often when talking about his field experiences, would relate it back to his time, working at mosquito control. And he also taught entomology and I got really into, you know, entomology. So there came a time in my life where I moved back to Minnesota and I thought “well, this seems like a job I would enjoy.” I just tried it out on a whim and really loved it!
How does a typical day look like?
SARAH: Oh boy! [laughter]
LARRY: Yeah, I don't know if there's such, I mean... You always be going out in the field. But I mean the weather can play a factor- so I mean it could be gray cloudy, hailing, snow, sleet- Not necessarily snow. But well, sometimes. The weather is a big part of it. I mean, you know, it could be rain, this or that, but no matter what I'm- I've always been one of those guys. I always stick around I'm always in the field.
SARAH: No matter what [laughter]
LARRY: No matter what, you can't get me to leave, but yeah, dipper, some boots, maybe a rain jacket. I mean, prepared for the field for what's to come. We all have our material, whether it be Bti [Bacillus thuringiensis serotype israelensis]. Otherwise, we'll have some p35 for pre-hatch, so, for the larva. But yeah, that's a typical day. I mean, otherwise, you know, there's air work and we're dipping air sites, or dipping ground sites.
SARAH: And cattail sites.
LARRY: Yeah.
SARAH: All the above.
LARRY: Cattail sites, we’re surveying [in] the fall and then do some treatments in the spring before they [emerge]. So, yeah, I know it's a wide variety. I mean, otherwise, we can be doing customer calls and tire pickups. We're kind of switching over now to catch basins. So, it kind of mixes it up, you know, it's a variety, so you never know. But I mean every day is a little different. [laughter]
SARAH: Oh yeah! I feel kind of unique in this situation because- so the area that I have is northern Lake Elmo, which has a rain gauge that needs to be checked most days and then the only New Jersey light trap in the area. So, I get to go to a house in Lake Elmo where one of the original MMCD employees lives and it's been there since 58 years. It's fun to say hi to him. And you know, have that start to my day out in Lake Elmo and then figure out where we go from there. Be it, you know, air dipping, Cattail pre-hatch. So, it's fun, but it's nice to have that routine for myself to start out with all day.
LARRY: Yeah. It all depends too on the rain, you know. So I mean, last couple summers have been like drought years but, this year now, this spring has been really wet. So, we're doing a lot of air dipping. [laughter] So then we've got to try to fit in everything else, you know? Because the air dipping kind of takes over. And now we still got to do our pre-hatch and dip these red sites and if they're breeding then we got to [put] Bti [in] them. So, I mean it gets a little busy!
What's the coolest equipment you've used?
SARAH: I get to use the UTV. It's essentially like I'm four-wheeling around parks that we can't drive into, and there's a bunch of sites that are way out into the park that are hard to access. So, I get to spend a day four-wheeling in a beautiful park. It's so fun.
LARRY: Nice. Coolest... Ah, well. I get to do the black fly on the Mississippi River. So, I use a John Boat and go down there, but right now, the rivers are really high. I did put out some buoys with some tapes, but I'm pretty sure they probably got washed away. They closed the access down right now because the river's too high, so they shut the whole park down.
SARAH: Wow.
LARRY: So, we ain't used to that.
SARAH: No.
LARRY: But yeah, there's a wide variety. We got canoes, we got kayaks. We got yeah UTVs. We used to have Four-Wheelers. We've had boots, we've had all kinds of stuff. Snowmobiles, we've had it all.
SARAH: Oh... I forgot something, sometimes Kathy lets us bring the kayak out if it's hard to treat and it's deep water. Let's just paddle around and fling…fling!
LARRY: Yeah, yeah, we were just out on the canoe here last week. For some sites that were kind of difficult to get to. So yeah. Yep.
SARAH: Good stuff.
What is something funny that you have witnessed while working here?
SARAH: Marky Mark. [laughter]
LARRY: Oh yeah! Marky Mark. That's right! So, we were doing some Cattail surveying and uh, this one guy Mark, he was on the crew. He was on the edge of the swamp. And at this point, I mean, this was some really black… nasty, nasty water. And I just saw Mark tip straight over and just splash and he was totally full of mud. He goes, “Oh, I only live about a half a mile from here. So, I'm gonna go home and take a shower.” Yeah, but I think there's something funny every day. But I mean I make things funny! I just like it to be fun! You never know what you get out of me!
SARAH: I saw something kind of unusual… There was like a tiny- it almost looked like a pontoon, it was a man-made structure, and it was probably three feet by three feet. And I saw there was a goose like, laying down on it. It's like "what's going on?" The goose had nested on a pontoon structure. So, we called it goose pontoon! [laughter] The weirdest thing I've treated was a toilet! [laughter] Someone just had a toilet on their property that had all their water. It's unusual.
What is your favorite part of the job?
SARAH: Oh man. The people here are so good. We have such a positive, team oriented community here, that really just makes it so fun. Being outside is incredible. You have really high highs and sometimes really low lows but those are often just funny. And there's always a story at the end of the day. Someone comes back and something crazy happened. You know? It's just fun. It's fun!
LARRY: Yeah, I gotta say two- uh, yeah, I know the work environment is really good. We've had a big changeover in the FOS’s [Field Operation Supervisors] and it's a lot younger crew and I think they're more approachable and more. Yeah, it's just a good atmosphere!What is something that you will never forget about working here?
SARAH: Oh man. This is gonna take a moment, there's so many things. I always have to look at a pond to see if it's breeding or a boat!
LARRY: Yeah. It’s the wetlands. It's you know, when winter comes along, you're looking forward to get back, for the spring and things to green up and then go back into the swamps and it's just exciting. I mean, I'll never forget that because I've experienced it for 32 years. Ice is gonna melt, spring's coming, and I get in that truck. That first time, I get in the truck every season. It's like, “here you go again," you know.
If you could invent something to help you kill mosquitoes, what would it be?
LARRY: A nice big fly swatter, ain't gonna do it.
SARAH: I feel like if we had a material that only affected the disease and human bothering mosquitoes, we would be kind of existing in a perfect world. So I think that would be probably the invention I would make is something that only kills the ones that are hurting us.
LARRY: That'd be nice, too. To have maybe a 90-day material of some sort. We used to put briquettes in the water so we'd have to make one treatment a year. And uh, and we'd, you know, put it in the sites and then we'd save a bunch of smaller sites. So, it was nice, you know, because when that second and third round comes around it's, it's thick, it's it gets treacherous. So a 90 day would be nice.
SARAH: I agree! That sounds good to me! We’ll work on it, Larry. We'll figure it out!
If you could visit any place in the world, where would it be?
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- Culex erraticus larvae. (Photo by Nathan Burkett-Cadena, University of Florida)
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- Culex erraticus female adult. (Photo by Liam Wolff via iNaturalist, CC BY-NC 4.0)
SARAH: Brazil. I think that there's really cool ecology there. They have like more hummingbird pollinators, than bumblebee pollinators. So, I think that would be cool to witness. They also have some really fantastic looking mosquitoes that are brightly colored. So, it would be really cool to see them but they're like a lot of them are bright blue and like purple and kind of like showy. Yeah, it's cool! So yeah, I'd like to see that.
LARRY: I think Alaska. Maybe do some fishing and hunting, just to see the natural beauty of it would be cool. Yeah. Alaska. I did find a mosquito larvae that they hadn't found in like 50 years and it was the [Culex] erraticus. And [former MMCD entomologist] Sandy got really, really, super excited. She used to be down at the lab, and she['s] retired now but she was so excited when I found that larva. So within that week, she was out dipping with me. We spent the whole day dipping looking for another one of those, we could never find one. I don't think I've never found one again.
SARAH: Can I answer the thing that I won't forget? Because it has to do with Culex erraticus, I did Monday night sweeps, when I was in the lab back when I was living at my parents in Woodbury, and I think they [Culex erraticus] do better in drier years. I got one in my sweep and I ended up getting two more throughout the season but that was the first record that we had at MMCD of an adult species ever being attracted to humans, like the fact that it came and was in my sweep. So that was so exciting to be part of that kind of discovery. [high fives Larry] Culex erraticus team!
How is the work culture here at MMCD?
SARAH: Amazing.
LARRY: Yeah. The way they make it fun. I mean, you know, there's different events we can do even after work hours. We do movies, sometimes they'll do hikes in some parks, which is pretty cool. That just didn't happen back in the back in the day. With the new FOS's, it's pretty cool. Yeah, it's a good vibe.
SARAH: I think the fact that even though we spent all week with our co-workers after work, we go out with them and spend more time and have more fun together. Really speaks to just like how much fun we have together. Then just other aspects that I've noticed about MMCD is like there's such a spirit of personal, professional growth. I feel like I'm treated like a person with a life, you know, family stuff matters when it comes up and I feel cared about. So it's wonderful.
