Creepy-Crawly Alert!

I noticed a couple weeks ago that we had a tree full of these little critters...

I went several days of debating what to do about them. The are eating our Live Oak into oblivion, along with every other Live Oak within at least a block of our house. I cannot emphasize enough, the insane numbers. When our A/C unit is not running you can actually hear them moving around, eating the leaves. Our yard is covered in leaf litter that has fallen from the tree.

I did a little researching online and have decided they are some sort of tent catepillar. If that is indeed what they are, then someday they will turn into moths. They have been leaving little strings of silk all over the tree, that consequently are catching the seeds that are falling from the tree. It's like silk thread highlighter.

I read that pesticides will kill the catepilliars, but they will be protected if we spray while they are in their tent. As of right now I do not see any tents. PHEW. My dad recommended torching the tree (apparently that's what his father used to do), but that is absolutely out of the question. I also read online that we could put them in a bucket of soap water and that should kill them. Question was, how do I convince hundreds, if not thousands, of little crawlers to climb into said bucket?

I continued to debate, since we have Aiden's birthday planned for this weekend - meaning a bunch of kids will be rolling around in our yard - until a friend on Facebook recommended spraying the tree with soapy water. Why hadn't I thought of that?!

Sunday we finally got around to tackling the task. Or I should say Travis did, since I would be no where near this catepillar rain (is it weird that this song just came to mind?), and most definitely not under the tree as it was sprayed. I stood on the other side of the yard when Travis began. Thank goodness I did, because every catepillar he shot with the hose flew a couple yards before thudding in the grass. Then, slowly but surely, they started to be affected by the soap and began dropping from the tree like flies. Or maybe they dropped like catepillars?

After the flood under the tree cleared, this is what we found on our sidewalk...



Each one of those little white smudges is a catepillar. The ones that were present during the original fall were covered in mud. When I went back outside 30 minutes later, it was clear there were more catepillars that had crawled out from the grass onto the sidewalk, since they were not coated in mud.

The next morning I expected to find a serious graveyard. I was not looking forward to the stench of hundreds of rotting catepillars that had roasted in this humid, Texas heat. I was surprised to find it was about the same as it had been the night before. Travis said he saw several birds picking them off one by one. Perhaps the squirrel that lives in our tree is helping them out. According to the good ole internet tent catepillars are not poisonous, but might make an animal react adversely if ingested. Whatever that means.

When I got off work, there were more catepillars rolling around dying on the sidewalk, so it looks like the soap is continuing to work. According to the weather man we should be getting a lot of rain this week (thank you Tropical Storm Alex). Hopefully that knocks out a few more and come Saturday everything will be peachy keen.

On the upside, our yard smells sparkling fresh!

Flooded Catepillars from Nicolette Ward on Vimeo. (Two more catepillars at Vimeo.com)