Jay Wortham found it under the cabinet below the kitchen sink after his mother died in August ”” a blue bottle of insect repellent.
His mother, Margorie Wortham, 91, died of West Nile virus, the mosquito-borne illness that has spread across this city and other parts of the country, killing 118 people and sickening nearly 3,000 others nationwide.
Mr. Wortham believes that his mother was bitten by an infected mosquito one hot day in July while she sat on an old wooden bench under a pecan tree in her backyard. Though she had often used the bug repellent, she was not wearing any that day.
Here in Dallas County, the West Nile outbreak’s hardest-hit county in the United States, a few missed pumps of bug spray can haunt the relatives of those who die from the virus.