On 1-Jun-08, Betty Mayfield wrote:
> During my recent Google search on caterpillars, I found the
> description of the forest tent caterpillar (Malacosome disstria)
> similar to your description.
I remember a really bad outbreak of tent caterpillars about 1944.
There has not been an equivalent infestation since. Everything was
covered with them, and the neighbours all along the street were
scooping them into containers - the women using tablespoons so they
wouldn't have to touch them, and the kids just using fingers. Then
the boxes of them were tossed into our woodstoves. Unfortunately,
ours was burning when my mother tossed them in, and when she went to
make dinner, there were caterpillars crawling all over the stove.
No, this winter moth is not a local insect. It is European, but had
been in Nova Scotia (on the Atlantic coast of Canada) before arriving
on the Pacific coast, probably on some nursery stock, though it
wouldn't have been on fruit trees as they have to be fumigated before
being sent out West. Of course, someone might have done an illegal
private importation.
It was devastating because it was new and there were no predators
here until they were imported after a number of years of total
defoliation of all deciduous trees. The leafless trees made it seem as
though winter went on for a very long time.
Diane Whitehead
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
maritime zone 8, cool Mediterranean climate
mild rainy winters, mild dry summers
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