Published Monday, August 28, 2000 City spraying blamed for mass butterfly deaths in Gaylord Statewire GAYLORD, Minn. (AP) -- Residents in this southern Minnesota town suspect that a city-sanctioned mosquito spray killed much more than the pesky bugs -- they think it also decimated the local butterfly population. Residents noticed so many butterflies languishing in the street on Thursday that they mistook them for leaves that had already changed color and begun to fall. " When I got out of my truck, I realized they were butterflies, under all the street lights, just fluttering on the road, dying, " said Jim Otto, who noticed the butterflies Thursday morning while returning from work. Debbie Blaschko was with her family on a rural Gaylord farm when her children told her about the butterflies. Blaschko, who lobbied against the spraying for health reasons, told the children to gather as many as they could. In a short time, they had collected about 200 monarchs. Renee Norman' s daughter, Jesse, gathered about 120 monarchs, including several on the family' s front porch that she was studying for a school project. " The evening they sprayed, there were dead butterflies everywhere, " Norman said. " Jesse was devastated ... Her and another girl went around town, gathered up a bunch of butterflies, took them to the Gaylord Hub (the local newspaper) and said, ' Look what happened.' " The city hasn' t determined whether the spray caused the dead butterflies, said Assistant City Administrator Lorraine Mielke. Gaylord contracts with the city of Arlington for mosquito spraying. Mayor John Schwartz said he' d talked to the man who sprayed Wednesday night, and the man said he' d done nothing differently than the previous weeks' sprays. He also spoke with the chemical manufacturer who said no harm should have come to butterflies. Schwartz said the city even had postponed spraying for six weeks to accommodate the wishes of spraying opponents. The city had approval from the Food and Drug Administration and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, and that the man who did the spraying was licensed, Schwartz said. Aside from a few special events, Wednesday' s spraying was Gaylord' s first attempt at citywide mosquito spraying. The effort involved several sprayings during the past few weeks, none of which harmed anything but mosquitoes. Mike McLean of the Metropolitan Mosquito Control district said he couldn' t comment because he hadn' t examined the equipment or chemicals used in the spraying. " We' ve never seen a situation where you' ve got thousands of dead monarchs. Something' s obviously gone wrong, " McLean said. " A wholesale monarch massacre doesn' t sound acceptable to anyone. On the other hand, these are insecticides, and if you don' t handle the equipment and materials right, things can go wrong." Copyright 2000 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. © Copyright 2000. All rights reserved.