We are probably familiar with the the hit TV series, MASH. Alan Alda, as Hawkeye Pierce, or maybe it was radar, would interrupt whatever the moment’s scene was, with a plaintive cry: “Incoming”. And that meant one thing: choppers approaching and about to land with war wounded at this behind-the-lines MASH hospital in Korea.

This was kind of my thought when a loud “whirrrrrrr” soon became a loud roar there on the marsh outside our kitchen window. Speeding and skidding across the tall grass, was a … HELICOPTER! It was coming straight for our home before braking and slewing southward along the tree line.

I grabbed my camera and ran outside as the thing came to a stop, whirring intensely over the green and brown grasses beyond our back lawn. Close enough I could see the pilot waving hello. That, I thought, was a new first for the venerated “Marsh Creek Wave”. But these weren’t neighbors on a joyride. The chopper belonged to Anastasia Mosquito Control. Said so on its side.

I later found out the chopper was on a routine salt marsh surveillance mission, hunting for mosquito larvae. And yes, apparently they can spot mosquitos from a helicopter. Who knew?

“We can drop a person in a harness”, Dena Autrey told me. Dena works at Mosquito Control’s mission control. Which sounds like the hangar from where these airborne surveillance sorties take place.

“But we can see them from the air, gathered in big black balls. The water’s not deep and they are often in large numbers”.

The county commandos perform two missions a week, “all around the county”.

“It depends where the rains are. They look over the wet spots, because saltwater marsh eggs hatch quickly.”

“So, do you think they found anything serious out there by my house?” I asked.

“I don’t think they did. So far, the Ops Manager hasn’t received a mission request”, Dena assured me.

Good. The last thing we need now is a mosquito pandemic.