Say It

Don't Spray It.

One day during our visit to Minnesota, Betsy mentioned that a government official had stopped by to inform the residents that mosquito spraying would take place as soon as the weather dried out. They were concerned about a massive mosquito bloom after all the wet weather. Reasonable concern, but then I was concerned about aerial spraying of an unspecified substance at an unspecified time in an unspecified manner. Maybe I was overreacting? 

Two days later, when an extremely low flying helicopter was making neck-twisting passes over our woods and wetlands, I had to wonder what it was they were doing. I couldn't see any spray coming out and there was a good breeze blowing too. Why spray in a breeze and wouldn't we smell the chemical? I thought maybe they were dropping BT pellets, then, which would drop without much affect by the winds. Yet, I couldn't see anything coming out of the helicopter, which was just above the tree line, about 80 feet up. The whole episode left me with more questions than answers, and a certain degree of discomfort.

When I was a child, in the late seventies, we had massive outbreaks of gypsy moths and caterpillars. There was no government control that I was aware of at the time. Spraying, if you chose to do so, was the responsibility of landowners. We lived within oak forests that were highly infested with the moths and caterpillars. We got used to the sound of dropping turds hitting leaves and other surfaces, touching tree trunks moving with highways of caterpillars, seeing certain trees completely defoliated, the egg masses laid on every vertical surface. 

But, none of that excuses what also happened. Overnight, new gypsy moth eradication companies sprouted. Their business model was a tank truck, high pressure pump, and thousands of gallons of chemical pesticide. On summer weekdays, when the neighbors were at work, but school-aged kids were at home and outside, the trucks would show up, unannounced, and begin spraying high pressure jets up into the canopy of oaks. 

We stood there, watching, until the acrid chemical overwhelmed us and we ran inside. When they were done spraying, we went back outside to see what became of it. Amongst the dripping, sticky residue, so unusual on a sunny summer day, what we found were dead squirrels, birds, all kinds of insects, and, of course, dropping gypsy moth caterpillars. I can remember the pungent smell in the spraying's aftermath till this day, partly because it wasn't an isolated occurrence. It happened again and again over the course of three or four years, until neighbors began to realize that the Gypsy Moths weren't exterminating the trees and their spraying was costing them for naught.

Oak trees, Gypsy Moths' favorite, can survive the defoliation. We never lost one tree (all our trees were red oaks), and the oak forest that stood then, stands now, minus the ones cut down for neighbors' house extensions and pools.

So, what's with all the memory lane? I was reminded of all this the day after we arrived home. I sat in the van for a moment and noticed this trap hung from a street tree across the street from our apartment. It's a pheromone trap used to collect moths, which the USDA uses to infer gaining or lowering numbers of Gypsy Moths in an area, year over year. 

I have not noticed an up-tick in gypsy moth caterpillars in our area. Although, a few years ago, on our trip to Minnesota, I noticed a massive regrowth of young, bright green leaves off Highway 80 in Pennsylvania. On our return trip I noticed dead caterpillars everywhere at a rest stop and the attendant there told me they had sprayed. We didn't sit on any benches under the trees.

I googled quite a number of combinations of traps, Gypsy Moths, USDA, and New York City. The best I got was a recent article from a Washington state, local newspaper describing a similar trap and process in use there.