INFESTATION DRIVING VALLEY A LITTLE BUGGY.

Byline: David R. Baker Daily News Staff Writer

These bugs look like tufts of cotton, drifting in the wind. Until they swarm your face, coat your car or start sucking the sap from your trees, that is.

They are woolly ash aphids, and thanks to the wet El Nino winter and long, lush spring, they are suddenly everywhere.

``They're out with a vengeance,'' said Rosser Garrison, entomologist for Los Angeles County.

Some San Fernando Valley streets are so thoroughly infested that the whitish bodies of dead aphids are piling up in the gutters, while live ones cover the sidewalks and cars with a sticky secretion called honeydew.

``You can't go outside barefoot,'' said Ellen Garrett, who lives on Glade Avenue in Woodland Hills, where the ash trees are under siege. ``Our cars get covered with the stuff. It's like snow.''

In Santa Clarita, the aphids' numbers have grown so great that officials there are waging a war on them and against another pest, the white fly. Aphids are frequently mistaken for ash white flies, a destructive imported pest that swarmed through the area seven years ago. To combat aphids and white flies, Santa Clarita is releasing predatory bugs before the insects do too much damage to local trees.

Los Angeles County officials, however, plan to let the aphid infestation run its course, calling the bugs more nuisance than menace. And a spokesman for Los Angeles' Public Works Department said his agency has no plans to protect the city-owned ash trees.

``We're not in the pest-control business,'' said department spokesman Bob Hayes.

The bugs, which drain moisture from the trees, are part of a parade of unusually heavy insect infestations that could last through the summer. And although insect sprays will kill the aphids, you might be better off letting their current breeding boom run its course, Garrison said.

``Usually these hordes don't last long, a week or two, and then they'll disappear,'' he said.

By most accounts, the aphids aren't a serious threat to trees. They tend to cling to the underside of leaves, draining juice, and cause the leaves to curl and fall off. As they eat, the bugs excrete honeydew, which sticks to sidewalks and cars.

But as unsightly as their handiwork can be, the aphids won't actually kill the trees, Garrison said.

``Trees can take a great deal of stress, more than this,'' Garrison said. ``But it isn't very pleasant for the trees. And it isn't very pleasant for people around here, either.''

Just ask Garrett, who said she wishes the city would do something about the infestation on her block of Glade Avenue, near Victory Boulevard. The trees that form a canopy above the street have lost so many leaves that whole branches are bare. And shoes make a smacking sound walking through honeydew on the sidewalk.

You need a high-power hose to blast the stuff off your car, Garrett said, but at least it doesn't seem to hurt the finish.

``This stuff is a mess,'' she said, sighing and shaking her head as aphids drifted through her yard.

They also have been spotted in nearby West Hills and in Van Nuys, several miles away. Al Kholos first noticed the aphids in his neighborhood, near the Van Nuys airport, about a week ago.

``You can hardly walk without breathing them in,'' he said.

Garrison said that after the initial population explosion wears off, the aphids will stick around, in diminished numbers, until the fall. In the meantime, he recommends putting up with the swarms and sticky mess.

``If you can, just bear with it, and don't park your car under the trees,'' he said.

And it is only the beginning.

Now that the region has dried out from El Nino and warmed up, other insects are starting to emerge.

``This is going to be a bad bug year,'' said Charles Brown, manager of the Armstrong Garden Center in Northridge.

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Photo: (Color) Swarms of woolly ash aphids, like this one, have descended on parts of L.A. County.

David Sprague/Daily News