Picking My Battles

Warning: The following may be upsetting to those fans of Eric Carle’s Very Hungry Caterpillar. Parental discretion advised.

During Shelter in Place, some folks are practicing music, cultivating sourdough starters, drawing rainbows, zooming social gatherings. I am taking on the caterpillars in the backyard. If left unmolested, they eat the trees and shrubs and pupate into moths. Last summer we had spindly chewed up trees and great clouds of moths in our backyard. This summer we hope to enjoy shade and unobstructed garden views because here on McDuck Space Station I am killing furry slugs.

I experimented with Integrated Pest Management. The Western Tussock caterpillar is preyed on by wasps. More wasps? Not a benefit. I introduced a caterpillar to the blue-bellied lizard that lives under the house. The caterpillar crawled over the lizard’s back and down its tail. Birds won’t eat the Western Tussock caterpillar; its bristles are irritating to avian gullets. I put a caterpillar in front of a black beetle. The caterpillar crawled over the beetle. I read that wildlife managers in WA state introduced a virus to destroy their caterpillar population. Sadly I don’t have those resources. So it comes down to me and my broom.

First, I brushed them down. I was improving my hand-eye coordination and building upper body strength. I swept six, seven in one blow. I went out sweeping every hour. But the caterpillars had numbers up on me. I suspected I was giving them a broomy thrill ride down into the ornamental shrubs in the shade garden. I increased the force applied to each critter. “More hammer: less finesse,” as one daughter has famously told the other. Now greenish caterpillar guts speckled the fence. And my fierce determination to take back my garden lent me power.

My spouse noticed my preoccupation. After some initial heckling, in which he called the Caterbattle “Sisyphean,” JG got with the program in his own engineer way. He brought tools. First, we pruned back the cherry plum tree that had been giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Less food and shelter should mean fewer caterpillars. The caterpillars got stickier and trickier, hiding more adeptly. So JG duct-taped a plastic putty scraper to an extension rod. With this jerry-rigged pupae scraper, he poked at the cocoons stuck in the eaves. The furry slugs were going down, thanks to our combined efforts.

Although we are still showered by greenish pellets of moth poop in the backyard, I have hope that we are reducing the population of these little shitters. (“Mom! Everyone poops! It’s not an insult!”) That will be part of my Coronavirus story when I remember these times.