“I honestly feel that with the sheer number of them, they’re going to come in at night and smother us,” said Geri Butler, a Maine woman whose home has been invaded by spongy moth caterpillars.
According to the Bangor Daily News, Geri and her husband Roy have already spent $6,000 to deal with damage the caterpillars have caused on their property in Lovell, Maine. Their trees are nearly bare, and the caterpillars (the larval stage of spongy moths) are all over their yard and the sides of their home. Caterpillars have even dropped into the Butlers’ food.
Each female spongy moth lays around 500 eggs that lay dormant in the winter and hatch in May, according to the University of Maine. As caterpillars, the larvae go through several stages and molt (shed their exoskeleton) around five times.
Late stage spongy moth caterpillars are 1.5 to 2.5-in. long, hairy and dark, with five pairs of blue spots on their front body segments and six pairs of red spots on the back body segments. At this point, “they are able to strip a tree overnight,” said the university.
Apart from their ability to destroy tress – especially hardwood trees such as oak, gray birth and fruit trees – tiny hairs found on the caterpillars can irritate the skin of some people and severe reactions can result in rashes and itching.
Additionally, “caterpillar “frass” (essentially excrement) can literally rain down from trees,” where the larvae have settled in, according to the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service.
The USDA Forest Service has identified the spongy moth, or Lymantria dispar dispar as an invasive nonnative insect. They originally came to the U.S. from France in 1869, said the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
“Spongy moth was introduced about 130 years ago near Boston and has chomped its way through New England and Mid-Atlantic regions; the current ‘invasion front’ stretches from North Carolina across to Minnesota,” said the USDA Forest Service. In some areas, populations can erupt in five to 10 years.
In Maine, where the Butlers are battling an army of the spongy moth caterpillars, infestations typically break out in the central and southern areas of the state.
Ways to prevent or stop an infestation listed by the University of Maine include: crushing eggs, larvae, pupae and female moths; using barriers such as burlap or sticky petroleum to keep caterpillars off trees and spraying specific insecticides.
According to the USDA Forest Service, chemical insecticides are no longer used for spraying. Instead, only biocontrol mating disrupters are used.
Maine doesn’t have plans to spray the Butlers’ property, said officials cited by the Bangor Daily News. They said it would likely not be effective t this time of year. Roy said it could cost $40,000 or more to try to get rid of the caterpillars on his own.
There is a bit of hope for the Butlers, however. Larvae overwhelming their home are expected to recede into protected areas next month to form pupae.
After around 10 to 15 days, moths emerge for these pupae. Fortunately for the couple, there is only one generation of the moths each year.
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