The Invasion of the Leaf Eaters!
One day there were no caterpillars and then there were millions. One day the trees were green and dark with the new Spring leaves and a week later there were holes all over the horizon where two or three complete trees were stripped bare. Down to the green stalks. In the morning the base of a tree would be moving under a blanket of fuzzy caterpillars making their way up to the top of the tree, where they would work all day chewing it clean. Eating each leaf like a sandwich they bit until it slipped from their grasp partially eaten. These leaf sections fell to the street and driveways and all along the road. Along with the shards of leaf there was a rain of caterpillar crap and I don’t know what was making the noise, exactly, but it sounded like clipped chewing or the sound of tiny gravel being dropped or crackling dry leaves being burned. It was a sound that didn’t come at you all at once. As you listened and focused in on it, it slowly blotted out the other sounds. Bird twitter, breeze-blowing, A/C compressor humming-all retreated into a ball of cotton and left us to hear the thousands of fuzzy caterpillars eating lunch in the trees. The shit and the leaves falling built up on the road side and after a rain there was a muddy sludge of caterpillar waste and bits of pieces of leaves. An oily slick muddy composite.
One small stand of trees is at the base of my driveway and it reaches over the drive and the road as you approach the drive, with thick lobed leaves on branches that never grow out of hand. I mean, they rarely need pruning and these trees only grow to a smallish size that is in perfect proportion to the slope and size of the driveway. I love these trees. At 6:15 am about five days ago I stopped with the dog’s leash over my shoulder about to do “the walk”. Gurler squatted on the opposite side of the road to pee and was nibbling on long, dark green grass. There on the trees was a coven of caterpillars. A carpet of them wriggling like a live rug, about to move all together to the cafeteria in the trees. I moved closer and what I saw made me, I don’t know, sad? Mad? Powerless? I don’t know. I only know that I wanted to kill as many of these creatures as I could. I’d sworn to myself that I would not let this caterpillar force get to me but it did and I broke my own resolution. I picked up a three foot stick and began to explore for the most efficient way to kill as many of them as I could. I knew I was powerless to save the trees no matter how many I dispatched but I had to do it. For about ten minutes-that is all-I used that stick as my sword, my machete, my bludgeon. There were dead, gooy bodies all over the place. The trees were completely ringed from the ground up to the first branches about four feet above the ground. My stick was sticky with blood and the fur. On the lowest branches the partial bodies hung and flapped in the breeze. I, myself, had bits of caterpillar and their insides on my arms and shirt. I couldn’t see a single caterpillar moving on those particular trees. Throwing my stick under the trees I continued with the walk with Gurler.
Coming back from the walk I saw that one or two caterpillar either came back from the dead or had migrated from some other trees and found opportunity in the carnage. The next morning I repeated the killing scene but there were not quite so many. I used the same stick. It was pretty disgusting. I tried my best to visit the trees every morning and now that the forest-flesh eating hairy caterpillars have gone I look out at those trees and there is still shade over my drive and on the street next to the mailbox and I think I won the battle. From the looks of the rest of the woods I believe the caterpillars won the war.
Still there is “no wind that blows no one no good”. The holes in the canopy have allowed the sunlight to penetrate and filter down into my garden. This garden was, for years, bathed in strong sunlight for six to eight hours a day but as the adjacent forest has grown the duration has withered. Lately the garden is lucky to get five hours. On the best of days. The product of the garden has decrease accordingly. A pastime which had become very important to me has turned sour like a water torture, slowly and steadily. But with the devastation of the trees by the devil caterpillars, Satan has given my garden a gift- albeit temporary- a gift of light.
Now, the caterpillars are gone and in their place is a confusion of moths. I understood the caterpillars somewhat. Their actions were obvious and predictable. Climb, chew, crap, come down and repeat tomorrow. Sometimes die by my “sword” or by a bird. But the lives of moths are less, no totally, meaningless to me and I am not picking up any clues from watching them as to their motivation or purpose.. I assume for each caterpillar that avoided the birds beak or my “sword” there is one moth alive diving and swooning outside my window now. And if so then I do get a real understanding of the scope of the invasion of the caterpillars that I’d witnessed. It was huge!! There were not thousand or hundreds of thousands or even millions. There may have been tens of millions and now their other selves-the moths-are scurrying without obvious goal or purpose right outside the window where I sit writing this. I have no idea where these not-quite-butterflys are going, what they eat, how they reproduce, what havoc are they visiting on me now.
I am told that these moths and the caterpillars from which they come visit the area every ten, fifteen, seventeen years (number varies from authority to authority). I’d witnessed the phenomenon myself about thirty years ago, when I seem to remember that they denuded all of the wild cherry trees near my cabin in Mountaindale. This time it was all the oaks and some of the maples around my house in Northern Westchester. I know there are other animal cycles that are expressed in multiple years-the development of the crickets or locusts come to mind. The characters of this invasion are called, I believe, Gypsy Moths. It may be that the person who named them had the same dark, unknowing feeling about them as I. A feeling that conjures up damp castle walls dripping with condensation. Lighted candles on sconces along a wall circling a stone stair. No railing on the other side of the stair to keep you from falling and moths. Hundreds of moths the color of the stone flickering close to the flames and away again. If you were to try to climb those stairs the moths would flick past you and onto you tickling. Brush by your ears and nose and your eyes. You might try to close your eyes to keep them out. You guide yourself with your hand hugging the damp, mossy wall. It is a very long stair. In fact there seems to be no top to it. You brush away a moth too close too your lips and you loose track of the wall for a moment and lose balance and you have to open your eyes to find it again. You do find it and you close your eyes against the moths and lean against the wall. It soaks through your sleeve at the shoulder. You decide it is not worth it to try to get away from the moths. You are pretty sure they will go away by themselves soon…without revealing anything of their purpose to you. You just hope it won’t be long.
Today (two days later) the riot of moths has calmed slightly. I saw why when I went out to visit the tomato plants in my garden. The birds were going insane diving in and out of what is left of the trees and bushes. They are feasting on the daub colored moths. I am glad for their feast. I am glad the birds have taken the moth issue to heart. I think I understand birds a little bit. Certainly more than I understand the moths.
