Caterpillars are Coming

 

 

 

 

We warned you in an earlier post to be on your guard against invaders who believe they have more right than you to the fresh and juicy produce you’ve so lovingly cultivated and nurtured, and here’s the proof. 

We can see a caterpillar cunningly camouflaged on this plant by mimicking the curve of the stem while leeching the nutrients out of the flower.

 

 

 

But read on for a sinister spectral story of creepy crawlies that’s almost as shocking.

 

We took a morning off from our arduous regime of sowing, growing, hoeing and mowing, seeding, feeding and weeding at the USG-Plot to bring you some bang up to date spooktastic news from Northants of a caterstrophic spectacle.

 

If this were April Fools’ Day or Halloween you could be forgiven for thinking that you were being pranked but this is an actual thing which looks like an ectoplasmic paranormal phenomena but is actually a horticultural horror.

 

 

 

The caterpillars of someone called an Ermine Moth have colonised a line of 15 erstwhile cherry trees. 

 

 

 

These caterpillars produce some kind of excessive cohesive webbing, in their cycle to pupate, which clings around the tree like a giant surgical stocking, while the hundreds of thousands of little caterpillars, about an inch long, are very busy going about their activities. 

 

 

   

 

 

The web is a layer of protection for themselves and their food to insulate against predators. 

 

 

 

 

   

There are so many of them that they’re even covering the ground in a continuous web spreading between the trees. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The trees are 100% defoliated and appear sucked dry of all forms of life, except when you look closer they are writhing.  The denuded trees are ghostly white and from a distance appear as though they’re frost covered or doused in talcum powder. 

 

This is a catertasrophy for the trees which will now be felled to eradicate the caterpillars and stop future infestations.   

 

   

 

 

Ghostly

 

 

   

 

 

Eerie                                   

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

Supernatural Phantasmal

 

 

 

   

 

 

Bush Tucker Trial

Caterpillar Style

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Terrifically

Terrifying Truncated TuTu

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

You’ve gotta' be a special kind of someone to pull off the surgical stocking look and these guys, I’m afraid, are no shoo-in. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scary Stuff

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

This web’s been damaged by interfering sightseers. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All branches completely covered in webbing and a little catercluster dangling at the end of each branch. 

 

That’s times thousands and thousands of branches. 

 

(This is actually worse than when my second husband’s family all came round one Christmas; laughing and shrieking and enjoying themselves – that was the former in-laws that were “laughing and shrieking” - we cannot accurately relate that these tiny creatures were known to be caterwauling).