That menacing wasp on the cover and the other pesky bugs pictured and written about in this week's cover story have bewitched, bothered or bitten Senior Editor Leon Jaroff, who edited the story, for quite some time. "My most bitter bug experience was in 1956," recalls Jaroff. "On assignment in Labrador for LIFE magazine I had to go through dense bush to get to Grand Falls. It was the height of the blackfly season, and I returned with 500 bites on my body. For 20 years, I've waited to get even."

But, as the cover story makes clear, man never really gets even with bugs. Reports Nairobi Correspondent Eric Robins: "I can certify that the mosquitoes are winning--at least in the Samburu game reserve in central Kenya. The mosquitoes drank my insect repellent for cocktails, then had me for hors d'oeuvres."

The bug assignment reminded San Francisco Correspondent John Austin "of summers in Kentucky with a farmer-uncle who tried to interest me in picking long, thick, pasty-looking hornworms off the tobacco plants." For his reporting, Austin stayed close to governmental and academic experts upstate, while Los Angeles Correspondent William Marmon talked with entomologists in the downstate area.

Of course, every war and insect story has its heartwarming moments, when enemies fall in love or, as was the case with Washington's Rosemary Byrnes, bugs have been close to the heart. "Several years ago in Mexico," she says, "I used to wear a live bug about two inches long with rhinestones on its back and a gold chain attached to a pin. I delighted in watching the expressions on people's faces when the normally quiet bug began to move on my shirt."

The reports from these correspondents, along with those of David Wood in Boston and Mary Cronin in New York, went to Associate Editor Peter Stoler, who wrote the cover story, assisted by Reporter-Researcher Fortunata Sydnor Vanderschmidt. For Stoler, the story was the latest round in a long fight. Says he: "I got malaria from mosquitoes as an infantryman in Korea, and I have had termites as a homeowner in Tenafly, N.J."

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