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CaterpillarsJune 06, 2006 They're the talk of the island, at least the parts of the island that I hang out in and pass through. Ride through the woods and you're continually brushing them off your face. Allie stops dead when one lands on her shoulder or sticks to her eyelashes; she won't continue till she's rubbed it off. Maybe they itch. They look like worms and they're about an inch long. They come in black, greenish yellow, or yellowy green; no matter what the color, they're squishy. They crawl on my T-shirt, they slither under my T-shirt; they even slither under my bra. Brush them off too hard and they squish on the fabric or, worse, on the skin. Yecchhh. They're also voracious. Sunday I stopped by the horse show at the Ag Hall to meet and greet. By the restroom doors you could hear them munch-munch-munching. In some places it looks like the oak trees are just beginning to leaf out. Not so: those leaves have been munched to stubble. I'm told that trees whose leaves get munched three years in a row often don't survive. I'm also told that spraying the trees costs around $500 an acre. Quite a few people I know are springing for the treatment, even when it means they have to move people and animals off the property for a couple of days. Others wonder aloud why the towns aren't spraying along the main roads. Munched trees aren't scenic; maybe the Chamber of Commerce should do it so the summer visitors can see what they want to see all summer long. In their next stage they're bigger and fuzzier. They're crawling up the barn doors and all over the fences. The trees around Malabar Farm and along the nearby Land Bank trails haven't been visibly affected, but I'm waging a sporadic one-woman war on caterpillars. As I walk to and from the pasture, I whack them with whatever's handy, sticks, rocks, or the business end of a pitchfork. Maybe I've fallen victim to false consciousness; maybe the caterpillars and I are really on the same side? If all the trees get munched and July's roadsides look a lot like December's, maybe the seasonal visitors will all go away? Nah -- that's a classic case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Whack, whack. Whack, whack, whack.
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