Gypsy moth

They were bad here a few years ago. My area of the state (South central) wasnt bad, but Eastern CT and RI real bad. Bare trees in early June.
I remember the roof i was doing was getting rained on with pieces of leaf as i worked.
I remember the one from 40 years ago when my brother and i would hike in the woods. You could hear the turds landing like sleet.
The woods behind my friends has several dead white oak skeletons killed from them. One majestic tree did manage to survive.
Between EAB, GM and a few other species dying off (spruce, beech) kinda makes you wonder whats going on?

 

Pray for some weather to take them out. Heavy rain I think but I’m not 100% on exactly what kills them. We had them some years back. Just reached our property lines, just crawling up the yard trees when we had a rain. Killed em off almost overnight.

 

Popped up again here as well. Even my house in town has them.

Last time they were through this area they left a trail of destruction.

 

We had them last year. Seemed to hit the black walnut and cherry trees.

 

We had them bad a number of years ago. My dad and I killed off thousands of them with the kids Super soakers filled with water and dish soap.

 

Hope for damp weather over the next few week. There's a naturally occurring bacteria that kills them off. Drought is their friend.

We got hit hard a few years ago. The oaks took the brunt of damage. Lots of dead standing oak in the area. Tree services making $'s cutting them down along roadways.

 

Yeah we lost a lot of white oaks here, should be burning some of it this Winter. Repeated year-after-year defoliation the oaks couldn't take.
The gypsy moths have a virus that always kills a percentage of their population. You find the ones that didn't survive folded in half on the tree trunk where they sometimes come down during the heat of the day. There is also a fungus that lives on the trees that multiplies well in wet/humid weather which can kill off a bunch of them too. We had a couple really bad years o defoliation by them, the only advantage (if you want to call it that) was the mosquitos had no where to hide in the heat of the day so dried up and died and there was less standing water for them to breed in. One year their population was so high they even ate pine tree needles. Walking in the woods and there'd be a constant rain sound of poo falling.

 

Just another invasive species that reeks havoc. I remember 2 really bad infestations during my lifetime. You could walk in the woods in mid June and have almost no shade whatsoever

 

Certainly can be disgusting when you get em bad. I remember the early to mid 80’s we were infested. Building a set of granite steps on a house. They were literally everywhere even crawling through the mud pans. Every trowel of mud had one or two in it. There’s so many caterpillars in those steps someday someone will demo it and wonder what the heck was going on
Everything we touched was squishy,,,purty gross.

 

Around 40 years ago we had it so bad that there were some roads that had so many GM crossing it that you feel the car slide a little when applying the brakes. Seriously thousands of them crossing at the same time. Hope it never gets that bad again.

 

We had tent caterpillars real bad in 2006 but by the time they decided to spray, it was blocked in court because it was too late.

I'm pretty sure they sprayed in 2007 and we haven't had a problem with them since.

 

In 2006 it was like that here in our town.

 

Since we live in the foothills of the Adirondacks and all of the wooded areas were infested, that torch would've been useless.

All the foliage was eaten off the hardwoods that year around here. I remember our cat coming out of the woods covered with them.

 

They couldnt make a clean getaway could they?