You may have heard the expression “Fighting fire with fire.” But what about fighting fly-er with fly-er? That seems to be the government’s plan to deal with a flesh-eating pest threatening cattle in the US. The pest in question is the New World screwworm fly. It's small and mostly harmless as a winged adult. But screwworm flies can be deadly to herds of cattle and other warm-blooded animals while they’re larvae. That’s because the larvae survive and grow by burrowing into the flesh of living creatures. As they do, they damage muscle tissue and vital organs. A cow infected with screwworm larvae can die in a matter of weeks if not treated. Government action has stopped the spread of US screwworms in the past. But they appeared in northern Mexico late last year. That's led federal officials to put measures in place to protect the cattle ranching industry in the US. The main part of the plan is to build an $8.5 million “fly factory” in southern Texas. They plan to breed millions of male screwworm flies there. Then they will sterilize them. Finally, they will load them into planes and drop them across US and Mexican ranch lands. When the sterilized male screwworm flies enter the population, they won't be able to breed. In time, that should cause the pest’s population to collapse. “It’s an all-time great in terms of translating science to solve some kind of large problem,” Edwin Burgess told The Associated Press. He's a parasite biologist at the University of Florida. The same plan has worked to control screwworm flies before, officials noted. It also avoids large-scale pesticide use. Reflect: If you could invent a clever way to solve a big problem using something unexpected, what would you create and how would it work?
