Tent Caterpillars

Spring is a wonderful time of the year. After the cold, gray days of winter, the burst of new life and color of spring is a welcome reminder of the renewal of life. Maybe that's why we celebrate Easter at this time of year. Pagan holidays and religious observances intersect.

But one of the downsides of the life renewal of spring is the return of the parasites.  This past winter I took care of the telemarketer parasites. Now it was time to take care of the spring parasites. Tent caterpillars specifically.   Oh sure, I hear the argument "They deserve to live too" but folks, not on my wild cherry tree. NO way, NO how. They got to go. 




Not too many years ago an anonymous bird or birds deposited some wild cherry tree seeds (and you know how they "deposited" those seeds, don't ask me to go into detail) at the perimeter of my backyard wildlife sanctuary. This was one planting I didn't have to buy.  During the summer I pull up many wild cherry tree seedlings that are in an inappropriate place but this seedling was perfectly placed. The many birds who visit my backyard wildlife sanctuary during the season LOVE those wild cherries.  I see many of those seeds in my eight birdbaths. Thus, this was one "weed" I didn't pull up.

Then last year I noticed the ugly emergence of tent caterpillars.  You have all seen a tree decimated by tent caterpillars.  Always a sad sight.  Well, I was determined not to lose my wild cherry tree to this particular, unwelcome parasite.  And just as I got rid of the telemarketers calling my land line phone daily, I got rid of those tent caterpillars. 

The way I got rid of them was by destroying their tents when they are young and crawling up and down the smooth wild cherry tree bark to the young leaves of the wild cherry tree.  I found if I kept the young caterpillars busy rebuilding their tents until the leaves fully emerged, then I could starve the caterpillars and thus save at least one wild cherry tree for a food source for my backyard visitors. And that's what I'm showing you here on this blog post of the video that Bill took of me just a short while ago "brushing" the young tent caterpillars's tents.  

Hey, who else do you know who posts blogs about controlling tent caterpillars?  Just one more reason why you should ALWAYS visit my blog.  To quote the famous Forest Gump (referring to a box of chocolates):

"You just never know what you're going to get."

Tent Caterpillers!

The tree I saved this morning from tent caterpillars

This morning I was trying to decide which of several subjects I wanted to write about today.  But first I had a couple of birdhouses I wanted to put into two of my favorite trees.  As I was putting the birdhouse in one of the trees I noticed TENT CATERPILLARS had taken up residence!  NO! NO! NO!

Last year I lost a favorite aborvitae tree to bag worms.  By the time I realized the bagworms were had taken over the tree, it was too late to save it. Thank goodness I happened to buy those birdhouses at Loew's this morning and decided to put them up right away.  Otherwise, by the time I realized the tent caterpillars were in the tree, it would have been too late.

Eastern tent caterpillars at home

Normally I don't like to kill anything, animal or insect but I have no compunction about killing something that is going to kill one of my trees or shrubs.  And this tree, which planted itself at the perfect location, is a favorite with my back yard birds.  NO WAY was I going to let the tent caterpillars decimate it.  So what did I do?  I got out my long pole that cuts branches and started to break up the tents that were formed in the elbows of the tree.  There were five of them.  Then I smashed, yes SMASHED the caterpillars.  No compunction about the mass slaughter folks, none at all.  

Mass of writhing Eastern tent caterpillars

So folks, my posting about the following subjects will have to wait:

Donald Sterling (real name Tokowitz), the racist L.A. Clippers owner controversy and hypocrisy

This man has a girlfriend? Must have money.

Cable and satellite TV commercial overload which is driving me away from TV

Is it me but didn't "they" tell us that when pay TV came we wouldn't have commercial anymore? What am I missing here?

Review of "World War Z" movie and Brad Pitt 

Brad Pitt (man on left)

Television "news" that isn't news

That missing Malaysian airliner?  It's gone, move on.

So you see folks, I'm not one of those bloggers who runs out of things to write about.  Even though I don't write about my most personal, innermost thoughts, hope and fears I still have plenty to rant and vent about, believe you me.

But I had this emergency this morning so I thought I would share it with all of you.  Life is always an adventure isn't it folks?