Boll Weevils Be Gone!

       LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) - U.S. agriculture officials are declaring
victory over the most expensive agricultural pest in the nation's
history.
      Boll weevils ate through U.S. cotton crops for more than a
century, costing growers $20 billion.
      But officials say 98 percent of the 9 million cotton acres
planted this year were free of the pest thanks to a decades-long
extermination effort in which fields were sprayed with insecticide.
      Traps were then baited with the pheromone, or scent, that boll
weevils give off when they want to mate. The smell lured the bugs
to their deaths.
      Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and Mississippi were declared boll
weevil free this year. It's now found only in parts of Texas and
Louisiana, and officials have high hopes for clearing those areas
as well.
     
      (Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)