Italy's unwelcome summer visitors

By Martin Buckley
BBC correspondent in Italy

The Asian tiger mosquito has spread to North America and Europe

From the peaks of the Alps in the north to the arid plains of the Mezzogiorno in the south, the daily life of Italians is said to be under threat from an invader from South-East Asia.

You can tell that summer has arrived in Italy when the new shoe shops start to open.

In the small Italian town where I live, there are over 30 shoe shops.

But clearly, Reggio Emilia needed one more, and it has just opened opposite my office.

Almost every shoe in the windows is a brilliant shade - lime green, scarlet or pink, like the roses that exploded into bloom in early May and now lie everywhere, caked with dust, like impoverished aristocrats forced to walk the streets.

As a recent arrival I have to take the locals' word for it that summer came late this year.

They blame global warming for the snow blizzards in March and monsoon-like rainfall well into May.

Summer awakening

But now that the sun shines every day, something has changed in the people of this town.

It is as though they have suddenly remembered - they are Italian.

In winter you could walk past a 10-storey block of flats at 8pm and know that 40 families were at home, yet eerily, not see a solitary chink of light behind the closed shutters.

Three doors from me, there is a man I used to see pottering in his garden every day until about mid-October.

Then, he vanished. For a while, I thought perhaps he had died.

For the last month I have seen him again every day.

So it is ironic, with all this reclaiming of the outdoors, that a predator has just begun to stalk this land

So the populace has wakened from its winter enchantment.

At last, people can lounge at the pavement cafe tables that have appeared absolutely everywhere. They can eat ice cream every day.

Summer festivals are breaking out, with brass bands and teams of brightly-dressed eight-year-old girls solemnly recreating dance routines from the TV variety shows.

In the park at the end of the road, through winter we were the only people who took our toddler to the swings on crisp mornings.

Now, it is abruptly over-populated with kids, their parents sporting immaculate summer-wear.

Insect invader

So it is ironic, with all this reclaiming of the outdoors, that a predator has just begun to stalk this land, an enemy so invincible, people tell me with profound bitterness that it is keeping them in their houses.

It is a small enough enemy - an insect that first arrived in Genoa from south-east Asia in a consignment of second-hand car tyres.

And it is easy to recognize: it has strong white stripes across its body.

The tiger mosquito, which appears at the start of June, is silent, incredibly persistent, and unlike most of its species, which cling to shadows or emerge only at dusk, the tiger is around all day long.

We arrived here last autumn amid an infestation of them.

The tiger mosquito is bad news for Italy's tourism industry

Our house had a wild, overgrown garden, and tigers hovered everywhere in venomous clouds, and though we plastered on repellant, and walked around with cans of fly-spray in one hand, we spent the autumn covered in bites.

The tiger mosquito is bad news for Italy's tourism industry, and incidentally, it is a species that is an effective transmitter of disease.

This region of the north, the vast flood plain around the River Po, has much reclaimed land - prime, moist, farmland where water sits in irrigation channels all year long.

The tiger mosquitoes love it.

Towns have set up teams to fight the infestation - but everybody seems to agree that the tiger mosquito is here to stay.

Tigers have also invaded America's southern states.

Surfing the internet, I came across the website of an American town that, by a judicious campaign of civic spraying and public mobilization, has completely eliminated the pest.

Breeding ground

I had this in mind when, last week, our local team of tiger hunters arrived on my front door step.

The man and woman, very friendly, wandered round my garden for half an hour explaining that standing water of any kind - and even damp grass - is enough for the mosquitoes to breed.

"So what's the town doing to eliminate them?" I asked.

They gave exaggerated Italian shrugs. "There's very little we can do," they replied.

So I mentioned the town I had read about where the tiger mosquito has been eliminated.

"Oh, but that's America," they told me, "it would never work in Italy."

"But why ever not?" I asked.

"Oh because we're not well enough organised," they said, as though Italy was some banana republic that could only dream about north American efficiency.

Seeing the confusion on my face, they added that as in the matter of paying taxes, or observing road signs, Italians never do anything they are told to - it would be enough for the government to order everyone to spray their gardens for most people to decide to do nothing of the kind.

They gave another resigned shrug, and wished me a very good day.

Last Sunday, the first tiger mosquito appeared - silent and stealthy - as I was drinking a coffee on the front porch at 11am.

It is going to be a long summer.

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From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday, 10 June, 2004 at 1100 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.