When Millions of Caterpillars Invade, There’s Nowhere to Hide

When Millions of Caterpillars Invade, There’s Nowhere to Hide

This summer western Rhode Island is getting invaded. Hard. Millions and millions of caterpillars are completely taking over my house. They enjoy eating leaves. To the point that when I walk into the woods around my house, I can literally hear them chomping on the leaves. Millions of tiny mouths, crunching in unison, makes a deafening racket.

Basically our choices are to wait it out, or bomb the forest with pesticide. We are literally surrounded by forest, and I am not excited about dumping toxins all over the place. So, we must endure.

They like to group together on the foundation of my house.

Todd hosed off our garage doors. The diabolical little buggers can swim. They climbed right back up again.

This is my driveway. Those brown splotches are not dirt, they are caterpillars migrating to the house from the woods. Many did not survive the journey and fell victim to tires. Or the pavement is just too damn hot and they got cooked while trying to cross.

Here you can actually see the detail on the caterpillars trying to cross the driveway. No more walking barefoot to get the mail, eh?

They are all over our workshop. We better have a ton of gorgeous butterflies after this. But no, we'll probably have moths. Or pterodactyls.

They climbed all the way to the top of the house. They are small, but they move very fast.

BJ Knapp is the author of Beside the Music, available for purchase here. Please sign up for the Backstage with BJ Knapp mailing list to get updates on events, signings, dog pictures and so much more.