A SPECIAL REPORT: PESTS

BIGGEST THREAT: It’s getting warmer, meaning the annual mosquito population boom will soon begin. . . . The county hosts 21 types of mosquitoes, but the worst is the Southern house mosquito. Small and drab, they’re hard to see. You can’t hear them fly, and you can’t feel them bite. Some carry the encephalitis virus, which at its worst fatally inflames brain lining but usually is no worse than the flu. . . . Mosquitoes transmitted the disease to an estimated 5,000 people here in 1984, but no cases have been reported since then.