Last night when I took my dogs out for their bedtime walk, there were dozens if not hundreds of nasty little black caterpillars all over my front porch. They are skinny and about 1 inch long or so. My son says they have been swarming around the yard, though he might be mistaking them for the bagworms on the trees ? The bagworms have 2 yellow/orangey stripes down their backs here. These new little caterpillars do not have any stripes, just plain black. I stepped on a lot of them, and when my dogs were back indoors, I got out some solvent to spray them with [I am out of bug spray at the moment], and it seems to have helped. I have no idea if there will be more tonight or not. I do not usually use poisons, but sometimes I have to do it to keep them from coming indoors.
Sounds kinda creepy. The last time we had that many caterpillars they were gypsy moths. You could not go from the house to the car without going crunch, crunch, crunch. That was almost 30 years ago. The year there were no leaves on the trees on July 4th. Eventually they ate themselves out of house and home, became disease ridden and the population crashed. We have not seen any since then. O.K. with me. I hope yours go away soon. Do your caterpillars eat the tree leaves? Jerry
Jerry--I remember those munching caterpillars! My husband & i had just bought our first house. After signing papers, we went to the house to admire our accomplishment. The gypsy moths were munching on every leaf on every tree. The ground was brown with you know what. We wondered if we would have any plants left on the property when they were done. (We did--just with smaller leaves.) Thanks, I have forgotten about that gypsy moth infestation.
