Bruce Landolt’s mosquito obsession couldn’t have come from a more likely source: a 12-year stay between two swamps on the Deschutes River at his home in a development called Oregon Water Wonderland.

”I had them inside and outside and everywhere,” said Landolt, director and manager of the Four Rivers Vector Control District. ”I was just mopping myself in Cutter (a mosquito repellent) every day.”

On a clear morning in a horse pasture northeast of Redmond, Landolt, a former excavation contractor and one of three south Deschutes County residents who started the mosquito control district more than 15 years ago, is plying his trade. He is trapping mosquitoes with homemade contraptions he pieced together with supplies purchased at Home Depot and Radio Shack.

Wearing a T-shirt, baseball cap and purple Nikes, Landolt, 61, is an unlikely soldier in the fight against West Nile Virus.

Public health officials predict the mosquito-borne illness will arrive for the first time in Central Oregon this summer.

Armed with $18,000, funding approved by Deschutes County and the cities of Bend, Redmond and Sisters, Landolt has launched an effort to find mosquitoes capable of carrying West Nile Virus in the northern regions of Deschutes County.

Four species of mosquitoes – tarsalis, vexans, inornata and dorsalis – of the approximately 22 found in the county can carry the virus, Landolt said.

His weapons: Carbon dioxide-emitting dry ice that can lure the insects from as far away as one-quarter mile, traps powered by D-batteries hung from trees in wet, mosquito breeding grounds and a global positioning system.

Landolt traps the mosquitoes, identifies the breed, uses the GPS to map their locations and sends in batches of the bugs frozen with dry ice to a laboratory in Portland to see if they are carrying the disease.

Landolt and Kristi Scavinsky, his field technician, also use plastic dippers on long poles to scoop out mosquito larvae from standing water. The larvae are later identified under magnification to see if they are one of the four carriers of the virus.

”My expertise is not on West Nile Virus itself but on the mosquitoes that can carry it,” Landolt said.

It’s a wealth of knowledge that Deschutes County residents in rural areas are learning to appreciate.

Keith Hawks, 64, pointed to a metal fence cutting through his 10-acre spread north of Smith Rock State Park on a recent evening.

”You know where they’re really bad is right along this fence,” said Hawks, as Landolt approached to hang a trap.

West Nile Virus, which can strike horses as well as people, is a topic of discussion in the neighborhood, Hawks said. He said he and his neighbors even bought 1,000 goldfish last year to put in nearby ponds in the hopes that they would eat mosquito larvae.

Landolt, who has been identifying and studying mosquitoes ever since the swarms on his Oregon Water Wonderland property led to the formation of the four rivers taxing district, is a source of solid information on a topic where rumors abound, Hawks said.

”Bruce told us the goldfish aren’t quick enough to catch the larvae,” he said.

The West Nile Virus work is only one facet of Landolt’s job. The Four Rivers Vector Control District, which collects about $100,000 per year in property tax revenue from the southern part of the county, also is responsible for killing mosquito larvae with bacterial spores and for spraying adult mosquitoes with a pesticide fog, Landolt said.

But the expected arrival of West Nile Virus has brought a new urgency to his work. Since it arrived in New York City in the summer of 1999, the virus has spread to every state except for Oregon, Utah, Nevada and Arizona, according to the U.S. Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Last year, 284 of 4,156 people infected with the virus in the U.S. died, according to the CDC. No human cases have been reported in the U.S. this year.

By comparison, some 32,000 people die each year from influenza in the U.S., said Dr. Emilio DeBess, Oregon public health veterinarian.

Landolt said it’s only a matter of time before the first case is documented in Oregon.

”Actually, I expected it to already be here,” he said. ”All indications are it should show up before the end of this summer.”

Washington state had its first confirmed cases of West Nile Virus last summer, said Tim Church, a spokesman for Washington’s health department. Two birds and two horses tested positive for the disease, he said.

”You usually expect these things to come on later in the season,” Church said.

A man who showed symptoms of West Nile Virus in Franklin County, Wash. in late May likely doesn’t have the disease, Church said. He said preliminary tests by the CDC showed the man has a similar affliction, St. Louis encephalitis.

Mosquitoes trapped by Landolt in northern parts of Deschutes County are likely to end up in his refrigerator in Bend, buzzing around in a white cylinder alongside half of a grapefruit.

”My wife calls it the laboratory,” Landolt said. ”She actually has a pretty good sense of humor about it.”

Landolt identified types of mosquito by placing them alive on a frozen cookie sheet and looking through a magnifying glass. The insects can’t be dead for more than 24 hours when they are checked at a Portland laboratory for West Nile Virus. The insects can also be frozen to 70 degrees below zero with dry ice and then shipped to the lab, he said.

Landolt, who said he hasn’t caught a common cold over the last seven years, is aware of the risks associated with his job. Tarsalis mosquitoes – those most likely to carry West Nile Virus – have been showing up in his south Deschutes County traps for years, he said.

If the virus does reach Oregon as expected, Landolt, a southwest Oregon native whose choice of property led to his unlikely second career, will be on the front lines. And the shorts and T-shirt will quickly be replaced by a mosquito-proof nylon suit with a mesh hood, he added.

”Should we start seeing dead birds, then you will see me in that white suit, probably whenever I’m out in the field,” Landolt said.

Chris Barker can be reached at 541-617-7829 or at cbarker@bendbulletin.com.