
DATE: Wednesday, October 15, 1997           TAG: 9710150045

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY PAM STARR, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  166 lines

THE BUG LADY\ NO ONE KNOWS INSECTS LIKE DREDA MCCREARY, BIOLOGIST FOR MOSQUITO CONTROL IN VIRGINIA BEACH.

DREDA McCREARY, armed with a turkey baster and a dipper, marches across a vast wasteland of dried, cracked mud that looks like the aftermath of a nuclear war.

Potter's Pit, a dumping ground for dredge spoils off Potter's Road in Virginia Beach, has been treated with a pesticide that keeps salt marsh mosquito larvae from developing normally. McCreary, checking the progress, searches a number of tiny crevices before spotting one with standing water.

Sucking out the water with the baster, McCreary pours the remains into the dipper and instantly spots the wriggly, pinhead-size larvae swimming around.

``I'll raise them in the lab and feed them fish food,'' she says with a devious smile. ``Just like their mommy. Then hopefully they'll die.''

As the biologist for Mosquito Control, McCreary has the kind of job that would make most people squirm. Just call the 40-year-old mother of three The Bug Lady of Virginia Beach.

Insects are her turf; mosquito surveillance is her specialty. And no one knows bugs like McCreary, says Phil Meekins, the superintendent of Mosquito Control. ``She's one of the best biologists I've ever seen,'' Meekins says. ``The job becomes tedious at times, but Dreda has never lost her enthusiasm. She has been a joy to work with.''

From 6 a.m. to around 2 p.m. every weekday, McCreary tries to keep the pesky critters under control in a city that logs several hundred, and more commonly thousand, complaints each season. She sometimes stands in a yard, waiting for one of the many species to land on her. Then McCreary deftly vacuums them up with a hand-held aspirator and deposits them in her little brown shack at Public Works to analyze and identify.

During the school year, she visits about 25 city schools and talks to the students about mosquitoes in general and how to keep them from breeding in their back yards. She likes to throw out facts such as: the annual U.S. mosquito population is 10 trillion - that's 41,000 insects for each citizen.

Other days, McCreary checks the 18 light traps that hang in various areas. The traps lure mosquitoes in and zap them. McCreary and her assistant, Jennifer Gregory, empty the traps and count the mosquitoes.

This tells them what areas of the city need to be sprayed, and for what type of mosquito. She also monitors the mosquito hotline, which tells residents which neighborhoods will be sprayed and when.

Sounds glamorous, doesn't it? Yet McCreary, who also plays the hammered dulcimer, banjo and Celtic drum in a female folk music trio, has loved every minute of the her 18 years as The Bug Lady.

Well, almost.

``I'm not good at tedious, routine things like data entry,'' admits McCreary from her one-room biology lab behind the Public Works office. ``Phil (Meekins) will ask where the information is in the computer. My response? The work is done, I just don't have it in there yet.''

Meekins says that although McCreary's job may not be glamorous, it is very much needed.

``The job becomes very glamorous in the summer when mosquitoes are eating everyone alive,'' he says. ``Biologists are different characters - I understand Dreda's point of view.''

The highlight of McCreary's career happened June 14, 1991. She and Meekins had responded to a homeowner's complaint in Aragona about a strange-looking mosquito flying about the back yard.

It was the first time the infamous Asian Tiger mosquito, which originated in Asia, had been spotted in the state of Virginia. These mosquitoes, which breed in standing water in open containers, make life miserable for thousands in Hampton Roads every season. To say nothing of the mosquito-control workers, who found that routine spraying is ineffective.

``When the homeowner said she got this little black mosquito with white stripes on the back, I wondered if that's what it was,'' McCreary recalls. ``I remember it flew up and landed on my arm at the exact same time Phil had one land on him.

``That was really exciting.''

OK. But then again, this is a woman who, instead of swatting bugs off her arm, observes them. A woman who can't walk past a puddle without looking in. She even went bug-collecting on her honeymoon in the Pocono Mountains.

``Hey, I was in the middle of a college project,'' she explains with a sheepish smile. ``We hiked up the mountains. . . . I just added them to (the project).''

Dreda was born in upstate New York and named after her aunt. But her grandfather made a mistake when he chose her aunt's name, she says. It was supposed to be Deidre, a moniker of Celtic origin.

``He heard it somewhere and liked it,'' she says. ``But he wrote it wrong on the birth certificate.''

Still, Dreda suits her. Deidre means sorrow, and McCreary is too easygoing and cheerful. That could come from her background, raised among farmers and blue-collar workers in a sleepy little town called Woodhull.

``Six hundred people,'' she likes to joke, ``and 1,200 cows.''

McCreary is an earth mother-type of renaissance woman. While she enjoys working, she puts her husband, Track, and their three children first.

Playing in a British Isles/American folk music band called Tangent is her creative outlet, her sanity time. She even writes some of the songs they perform. The band is pressing its own CD, which will be released before Christmas.

On any given workday, McCreary leaves the job around 2 p.m. for the Great Neck Recreation Center and exercises for 45 minutes before heading home to greet the children. Then her second shift begins.

Benjamin, 11, may have his drum lesson or Rachel, 7, her piano lesson. Nine-year-old Joshua might be going to karate class. There's dinner to be made. Then Scout and Brownie meetings in the evening. This week she's painting the house. She likes to paint.

On Wednesdays, Track doesn't get home from his job as information specialist at the Oceanfront library until 9:30 p.m.

``I was lucky today,'' she says, driving a white Public Works truck. ``I put something in the crock pot.''

Despite the hectic schedule, McCreary stays remarkably calm. She's quick with a laugh but can snap back into seriousness almost on cue. The band keeps her on an even keel, she believes. McCreary and band members Marsha Wallace and Connie Smith formed Tangent (named because ``we're always off on one'') three years ago and perform about twice a month at music festivals, church bazaars and other events.

On a recent Thursday night, the women converged at McCreary's Great Neck home for a rare rehearsal. They were to play at a church event that Saturday in Chesapeake and wanted to go over some of the songs. Munching homemade pizza and trying to ignore McCreary's three children and Smith's two boys, the trio flip through some music and tune their instruments.

``Let's play ``I Was Born in Tennessee,'' suggests McCreary, strumming a banjo with a flourish. ``I'm ready!''

The women are not in the band for the money, what little they receive for engagements. They play together for the sheer joy of making music, for the therapeutic value each one enjoys.

``It's something we love to do,'' says McCreary, the unofficial leader of the group. ``It's difficult to explain the feeling you get singing with other people. There's no feeling like it.''

McCreary has been a biologist with Mosquito Control for so long, and has taken so many hits from mosquitoes, that they don't find her as tasty as they used to. She, in turn, doesn't react to their bites.

``I get bit so often that I don't react to the anticoagulant in the saliva as much,'' she says. ``I'll use repellent in a bad situation, but when I'm working, it's part of my job to see how bad they are.''

On this day, the weather is warm and sunny but not as humid as it has been. Several of the light traps have only a few mosquitoes. Most of the specimens are other insects. One small spider is still alive, and McCreary watches it crawl on her hand dispassionately.

``Sometimes that happens,'' she says matter-of-factly.

Her children have probably benefited from McCreary's laid-back attitude about insects, she agrees. She takes her children on walks occasionally to find and identify insects.

``My kids have a different attitude toward creepy crawlies than most,'' she says. ``But they haven't done any insect projects yet in school.''

The light traps were to be taken down this week, but the unexpectedly warm weather has prolonged the mosquito season. Still, this year has been light. In 1995, Mosquito Control received 2,400 complaints. Last summer, it logged 1,600 complaints. And this year, only 500 people have called in so far.

When mosquito season officially ends, McCreary focuses on other projects. Last year she chaired the international mosquito control association and now serves as chair of the American Mosquito Control Association's education committee. This winter she's going to teach herself how to use the GIS computerized mapping system so she can map out mosquito-laden areas and make it easier on the workers.

So while her job may not seem exciting to the rest of us, it's perfect for McCreary. She even feels she's a better biologist because of her music.

``A lot of what I do is public relations and education,'' she says. ``Performing helps me understand the general public - I know I can't talk scientific terminology with them.

``This really is fun for me. I like my life as it goes along.'' MEMO: Tangent will be performing at the Tidewater Traditional Arts

Festival Saturday at Thomas Nelson Community College in Hampton. The

festival is from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Each event is $5; children 6 and

under are free.[sic] ILLUSTRATION: Color photos

D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/The Virginian-Pilot

Dreda McCreary, a mosquito control biologist for the city of

Virginia Beach, collects bugs from a light trap near London Bridge

Road.