Someone strapped a big blue ribbon to a boll weevil trap, maybe to celebrate the Boll Weevil Eradication Program, but more likely someone saw the boll weevil trap as a good spot to proclaim the birth of a healthy baby boy. Either way, it was creative.

In 2021, the Georgia BWEP installed 11,783 traps, each trap covering 109 acres, for a total of 1.287 million planted acres. Of those traps, roughly 1.28% were damaged during the season, most often by the hands of man but sometimes by Mother Nature. A little more than 2% of the traps were damaged in counties in the extreme southwest and south-central parts of the state.

"We position the traps strategically across the cotton producing regions of Georgia to create a safety blanket, so to speak. Each trap is important, and we all rely on them to keep check on something none of us in cotton wants to deal with again, the boll weevil. And we understand accidents can happen and traps get knocked down or damaged, but some people get a bit creative when they see a trap," said Alan Lowman, who heads up the program in Georgia.

The boll weevil eradication program hit its stride in Georgia, as it did across the South, in the mid-1980s. The boll weevil was officially considered eradicated from Georgia in 1990. Workers monitoring traps reported 61 boll weevils in 2002. Cotton's most notorious enemy was nowhere to be found in Georgia in 2003 and hasn't been trapped since.

By far, most traps are left alone and are only handled by the staff of the eradication program, which keeps check on that good blanket coverage, he said. But just one compromised trap can leave a hole in the blanket with lost data, or in the worst case, could be the one hole where the boll weevil slips through unnoticed.

A Quick Editor's Note: This will be the only gallery published regarding boll weevil traps. We don't encourage the 'creativity' in some of the pics. If you happen to see some of your handywork or something similar, don't feel obligated to brag about it, even if you feel you must, or anyone try to outdo what you see. Lowman and BWEP teams across the Cotton Belt thank you. Photos provided by Georgia BWEP.