8/8/2006: Swedish caterpillar infestation

axlrosen points to Boing Boing which points to this horrible image gallery of caterpillar infestation in Sweden.



I'm so very sorry to present you with the images that will fill your nights with terror for the rest of the week. Entire bicycles and trees are coated with the cocoons.



The trees are stripped bare by this stuff, but apparently they come back.





A Boing Boing correspondent says this is probably the "Bird-cherry Ermine butterfly" but Wikipedia suggests it's more of a moth.



What it'll look like when they're done. Not much improvement!

Next time I get too hot at work I will come back to those images. I didn't think I had any problem with caterpillars, but that has given me the cold shudders.

tent caterpillars are fun to eradicate with a can of Lysol and a Bic lighter...

edit: for example...

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...

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*runs away before they get him too*

The bike/tree picture from far away is actually pretty cool. Till you get closer and see the creepy crawlies under the seat. Maybe it's a Terry 'Butterfly' bike seat...

When I was a kid, our neighbors had a caterpillar infestation. Unfortunately, the little critters don't respect fence lines and that made for an entire summer spent avoiding the back yard. I can still remember trying to walk through the yard without stepping on any. Impossible. Squish, squish, squish.

But it beats the frog infestation my father remembers from his childhood. (Full body shudder.)

Once upon a time, approximately 7 years ago, I drove up to Tarpon Springs with my boss for a meeting with an apartment complex owner. It was a rainy day which is not unusual here in Florida. When we pulled into the parking lot of the apartment complex, we suddenly realized the dark pavement was moving! A closer look revealed that the entire lot as well as the grass and tree branches were blanketed with tiny tree frogs (about thumbnail sized). There was not a square foot anywhere that didn't have hopping, squirming, squishy little frogs covering it.

He pulled up as close to the front door as he could get, and I gingerly tiptoed across the frogs, mangling quite a few in the process. It was the most horrible, disgusting walk of my life. I'll never forget the crunch and 'sploosh' sounds as well as the squashing sensation under my high heeled pumps. :vomitblu:

Stormie

Stormieweather wrote:

I gingerly tiptoed across the frogs, mangling quite a few in the process. It was the most horrible, disgusting walk of my life. I'll never forget the crunch and 'sploosh' sounds as well as the squashing sensation under my high heeled pumps.

Isn't that a kind of fetish? Women in high heels crushing little animals?

Mammals squish much better. Ask Godzilla. :D

First one looks like someone found a bike and a can of spray paint.

That's one bicycle seat I don't wish I was. C'mon guys, you know what I'm saying.

I've seen this movie. Everyone comes out of pods and starts killing the normal people!

I saw the bike pic before I'd paid any attention to the thread title, and I thought I was looking at another strange art installation.

That first one looked Photoshopped to me, especially around the wheels and spokes. Wasn't till I saw the close-ups that I believed it.

Wonder if you could gather enough of that silk to make ya a shirt :D

Funny as the images at the Swedish website are dated mid June of 2006, everything here in TX is dead by then from the heat. Few bugs but lots of heat and humidity!

I learned some Swedish today.

For JPEG files...
Normala = Normal
Enorma = Enormous = BIG FUCKING FILES!!!

:p

Elspode wrote:

I've seen this movie. Everyone comes out of pods and starts killing the normal people!

Whew.... That means we're all safe.:haha:

Stormieweather wrote:

There was not a square foot anywhere that didn't have hopping, squirming, squishy little frogs covering it.

It was the most horrible, disgusting walk of my life. I'll never forget the crunch and 'sploosh' sounds as well as the squashing sensation under my high heeled pumps. :vomitblu:

Stormie

I had a similar experience, only it was grasshoppers. Huge, 1 1/2 - 2 inch long, grasshoppers. For people who aren't too familiar with them, they make lots and lots of guts when you squish them.

One summer while I was working at our baseball stadium we had an infestation. I am not sure why, but the entire area was covered with them. I think it had rained or something and they were looking for shelter and they say the bright lights on at the stadium and swarmed it. I could not walk without crushing many of them, and even when I managed to miss them there were already crushed bodies ready to squish under my shoes. The only good thing about it was I was wearing athletic shoes and so they didn't touch my feet... but it was so disgusting to feel the nastiness under my shoes!!! *shudders*

Mmmm... Caterpillar soup.

Bleah! They make bugs big where I come from- once I opened my knapsack at work and a huge beetle about the length of my index finger crawled out and over my hand.

and now yellowjackets in Alabama engulf entire car!

I saw that. It's freaky. I'd be so scared to have a yellow jacket nest that size near my house.

I remember reading about an ingenious trap you can make to kill yellow jackets involving a hunk of raw fish and a pan of soapy (but not sudsy) water. You'd need a swimming pool to kill a nest that size.

I just addressed my yellowjacket problem. I paid $225 for guys to squirt powder poison into my walls.

When I put my ear up to the wall, I could hear the whole nest buzzing. It was very scary.

It took two shots at it to kill them.



They had to go, because they wanted in.

I tried killing them myself with a cheap wasp killer spray and only got stung as a result.

I'm not removing this light switch cover until I have replacement vacuum cleaner bags.

Not wanting to distract attention from your sincerely creepy infestation UT but...

He investigated a nest near Pineapple, measuring about 5 feet by 4 feet, that was coming out of the ground on a roadside. A southwest Pike County house in Goshen had a giant nest spreading into its roof.

... there's a town called Pineapple!

I may die happy now. Or I may join internet dating sites for that area, hoping to become a British mail-order bride just for the thrill of living in (a) Pineapple.

Sundae Girl wrote:

...the thrill of living in (a) Pineapple.

A Pineapple Under the Sea?

/checks Sweden off the list of a possible vacation destination.:eek:

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=2]"We're not really sure how this multiple queen thing works," Ray said. "It could be that the daughters of the original queen don't leave the nest or that the queens have developed some way to cooperate."[/SIZE][/FONT]

That sounds like the plot of a sci-fi movie.

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=2]Specialists say it could be the result of a mild winter and drought conditions,[/SIZE][/FONT]

Thank you, Mr. 'No Global Warming' President.