It's Caterpillar Season!

To paraphrase someone else, I hate those f*****g caterpillars! You know them, you love them. They are buck moth caterpillars and they live in live oak trees all over the city of New Orleans, and in mid April to mid May they start crawling out of their evil lairs. They crawl out of the trees, they jump out of the trees, they find the most unlikely spots so that you can sit on them, grab them, etc.

Why do I care about these seemingly minor part characters in the life of New Orleans?
Because they have hundreds of needle-like hairs lined with very uncomfortable poison, that's why. I get stung every year no matter what precaution I take. Maybe I am just an idiot or a glutton for caterpillar punishment. Either way, I try to be careful, but they are alway waiting for me. Under a brick. On the handle of the recycle bin. In the debris that has collected in the drain area of the trunk of my car. One year two caterpillars (not just one because their conspiracy against me requires joint efforts) crawled onto a blanket I had put down for the express purpose of avoiding the caterpillars. Of course, I rolled over onto both of them, giving me a nice size welt on my leg for two weeks.

The week we moved into our house was the last in April, 2005. Three months before Katrina. The sidewalk in front of our house, as well as the stairs of our house, were a teeming mass of caterpillars , like some evil carpet of pain. You can step on them but for every one you kill there are a hundred out there. Waiting. So there must be a way to kill these guys, right? Old school New Orleanians will tell you to wrap your live oak with aluminum foil, about six feet off the ground. This will confuse the caterpillars and they will not crawl down and out of the tree. I guess they are supposed to turn back around and hang out until, well, just until. I don't mean to be disrespectful but the foil method does not work. It does not work! The caterpillars still get out of the tree, by crawling out or by falling out. At least your foil-lined tree looks festive.

The other and more reliable way is to call Parkway Partners. They are like a city organization, supplementing the city Parks & Parkways group. That's the group that will not mow the park by my house but that is another story. Parkway Partners will come out and spray your tree(s) with buck moth caterpillar poison for only $75 a tree. Once they spray, no more of the pesky buggers. At least until next year.

So watch out under the live oaks. Don't open your sunroof or put your convertible top down. Look at everything before you touch it. Get your kids to squash every caterpillar they see, they love it.