It is possible that she is referring to a specific research project about fruit flies that are a pestilence on olive trees, but bear in mind her folksy smug delivery, which says to me: "Look how ridiculous basic research is".
The mad cow disease fiasco was less like a brutal pestilence on poor wee cows than a metaphor for that flashpoint when ropey, on-the-cheap, pretty stomach-turning policy decisions come home to roost and send everyone bonkers.
He died "of pestilence" on Islay the following year.
Later, as World War II loomed, Schiaparelli designed two evening dresses (1939) in "shocking" pink silk jersey, covered with appliquéd black flies made of sequins and beads, a comment on the pestilence of war.
When a pestilence of cotton-worm descends on Epp's plantation, the hand of the divine at last seems present.
Finally, Mr. Mujica's eyes lit up as he remembered a passage from "Don Quixote," in which the knight-errant imbibes wine from a horn and dines on salted goat with his goatherd hosts, delivering a harangue against the "pestilence of gallantry".
Although one could predict pestilence, the measures one could take were necessarily limited.
An unpredictable mix of Expressionism, Primitivism, Symbolism and political allegory, his earthy paintings have one eye on war, pestilence and nostalgic memories, the other on the formal and material possibilities of painting itself (Johnson).
NEW YORK — Famine and pestilence are carrying on the work of destruction in the flood-stricken states of Ohio and Indiana today [March 28], and hourly adding to the already terribly long death-roll.
PAGE A6 PLAGUE OF PANIC IN GEORGIA Topping off the midsummer heat wave baking Tbilisi, television news has reported on pestilence, starting with snakes, followed by a swarm of unusually large locusts.
Here is the port-soaked "Books" Bagshaw, in Books Do Furnish a Room: "He possessed that opportune facility for turning out several thousand words on any subject whatever at the shortest possible notice: politics: sport: books: finance: science: art: fashion - as he himself said, "War, Famine, Pestilence or Death on a Pale Horse".
