From Mid-April to mid-May, a young eastern tent caterpillar`s fancy turns toward breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Plus snacks.
And knowing that newly sprouted crabapple greenery is at the top of his menu, no matter where he creepy-crawls, the folks at the Morton Arboretum aim to cut him off at the pass.
Since its formation in 1983, the Eastern Tent Caterpillar Posse, composed of volunteers, has been helping the insects bite the dust instead of the hundreds of flowering crabapple specimens living at Joy Morton`s woody museum. Eastern tent caterpillars don`t necessarily damage the trees, but they defoliate them during the springtime bloom, a fine time for visiting the grounds.
Without the posse, crabapple visitors would see hundreds of unsightly tentlike webs spread throughout defoliated trees, reason enough to eliminate the pests, said Tom Green, arboretum plant pathologist and posse coordinator. The posse, which arboretum staff believes to be the only volunteer pest-control program in the country, was a positive alternative to aerial spraying, considered in 1983 as one way of uninviting the ravenous dinner guests.
”Anytime a plane goes by spraying chemicals there is a big minus,”
Green said, in part explaning why they decided against such an industrious move.
”And we had never done that here,” added Marilyn Halperin, arboretum volunteer coordinator. ”We didn`t want to.”
Besides, the arboretum is moving toward a more restrictive policy for pesticide use, Green explained. Morton designed the arboretum as an ”outdoor museum arranged for convenient study of every species, variety and hybrid of the woody plants of the world able to support the climate of Illinois . . . .” It stands to reason, Green said, that arboretum residents should also be able to survive the native pests without the help of insecticides.
”We are not interested in prolonging a species when pests may become a life-threatening problem,” Green explained.
Fortunately for visitors, the arboretum sees nothing wrong with letting volunteers lend a hand. Fighting caterpillars for two hours every Tuesday and Thursday, during April and May, is just fine by 69-year-old John Martens of Naperville.
”We`re the good guys and we get rid of the bad guys,” Martens said as he walked the grounds. ”The caterpillars are the bad guys.”
Armed with metal pruning clippers, clippers on extension poles, brushes and gloves, posse members search the trees for the caterpillar`s large, tell- tale web, which only measures a few inches long early in the hunt. They also peel egg cases off the tips of branches. Each case contains between 100 to 300 eggs.
Unlike his colleagues, Martens used an ungloved hand on the first warm, hazy day of the posse to pull a web from the crotch of a branch belonging to one Malus sargentii, a Sargent`s crab.
”We`ve gotten rid of a lot of caterpillars right there,” he said, wiping his hand and, most likely, a few teensie insects, onto the orange towel hanging from his belt.
Sharing his philosophy is Adaline Rzym, 64, a Winfield resident, who joked, ”I touch them. I have bugs all the time at home.”
But Iris Frazier, 72, who lives on a farm in Bristol, likes her gloves just fine. ”Well, do you like to pick up worms?” she good-naturedly asked an observer who questioned her methods. ”I don`t.”
Of great importance is squishing the caterpillars while they are young. In May, the eating machines grow to be 1 1/2 inches long and sport furry blue coats with white stripes. ”I don`t think they are even cute because they make such a mess of the tree,” Frazier said.
Nearby, 72-year-old Roy Nelson was using a metal clipper attached to the top of an extension pole to reach a web high in one of the larger trees. With a tug on the rope the branch housing a web snapped between the metal clippers and just missed Nelson who jumped out of its earthbound course.
Where volunteers can, they use long wire brushes to remove the out-of-reach webs.
”We find you have to keep looking and you find them from a different angle,” explained brush-wielding Ruth Buchler, 67, of Naperville, paying close attention to the foliage in front of her. ”Then I scrub `em out.”
Brushes and hands are preferred methods of removal because ”We don`t want to really disfigure the tree for an insect that is an esthetic pest,”
Green explained.
Nobody intentionally takes caterpillars home as pets, but the creatures have been known to hitch a ride on volunteers` clothing. Nothing to get squeamish about.
Was Carl Everson, 66, of Downers Grove wearing a hat to ward off hitch-hikers?
Certainly not. ”It keeps my hair in place,” he answered with a smile.
”I suppose if you come out to do something like this, you aren`t afraid of worms, whether they get in your hair or in anywhere,” Buchler said.
Still, some posse members who stomp hundreds of miniscule caterpillars into the ground in April are uncomfortable performing the same job on full-grown fuzzies in May. Not Nelson. He has ”some pretty heavy shoes so I can get rid of them in no time.”
Green expects lots of caterpillars this season and recommends that residents who find them in their trees take the same steps arboretum volunteers do.
Do not burn them out of the trees, Green cautioned. The fire will do more harm than the caterpillars.
”I try to advise people not to use pesticides,” he added. ”But if you have to, use them judiciously.
”Why go out and buy something when you can take a brush and put it on a pole or clip them with a pole pruner?” Green reasoned.
Though it is too late to join this year`s posse, those interested in volunteering at the Morton Arboretum may contact Halperin at 719-2443.
And there are plenty of jobs besides squishing creepy-crawlies.
