Ian and I took a chainsaw to the low branches on the autumn blaze maple in our yard; I held the ladder and Ian used his long arms to reach and sever a half dozen or so limbs that were hanging over the bamboo and the Leyland cypress, in the the hopes that now the lantern flies will be more exposed on the main trunk-- the easier for trapping and killing . . . meanwhile, I taped the two maples in our front yard and while many lantern flies got stuck on the tape bands, there's still been an endless supply climbing the trunk, which I diligently massacre every time I go outside . . . so at the base of each tree there's a mass grave of splattered lantern flies-- which you'd think would serve as a warning to these stupid beasts, but they keep on coming-- but the questions is: where the fuck are they coming from? . . . or to be grammatically correct: from fuck all where do they be coming?
We have a lot of lantern flies too. Apparently they like maples, and when they built my street they lined it with maples and called it Maple Street. The older lady next door has been extremely agitated about these bugs all year, spraying them with vinegar and other home concoctions. She even had an exterminator come out and he was like "Yeah, not much I can do." The other day she came up to me and said "That aspen in your front yard is full of lantern flies! I said to Tom 'We better tell Drew about it!'" and I said "Well Patty, I don't know what I can do about it. Your own exterminator didn't know what to do. And it's a maple, not an aspen." She replied "We're going to be overrun with them next year!" and I replied "Yes, but not because of my maple tree. Look at all of these other trees" and pointed to the ~100 acres of woods behind our house. She then opined "They don't like those kinds of trees" so I said "Ok" and went inside.
ReplyDeletePatty seems like a peach.
ReplyDeleteI like this lady. She's fighting the good fight. Now you, on the other hand . . .
ReplyDelete