Smokin’ out the Worms

 

This mess is the result of fall webworms taking over the branch of a tree.

       Every year about this time, fall webworms begin to appear in trees around the Ozarks.  I have a quick solution for the ones I find around my place.  I take a long pole, stuff newspapers all around the end of it, light the newspapers with a match and hold the flame beneath the webs, which are full of worms eating leaves. In an instant they are all dead.

       Or you can cut the limbs off and burn them in a trash barrel. It is quick and efficient, and with that you don’t have to go buy chemicals to do the job.  Those worms are the larvae of a moth about a half-inch long with wings that are pure white or white with black spots.

       If you listen to some of the so-called experts, they want you to buy and use a chemical.  My advice is, stay away from chemicals!  In thirty some years here on this ridge top I have never used chemicals. They are not needed.  Several years ago I advised the burning of those webs, and a week or so later a Missouri Department of Conservation “media specialist” wrote that you should never burn them because that might damage the tree they are in.  That stuff he writes is so often hogwash. He spends his time in an office cubicle behind a computer.  Aspects of the outdoor world are as far away as Alaska.

        I have burned out hundreds of those webs full of moth larvae and there is NEVER any damage to a tree! In this day and time, common sense is forgotten in advice from the MDC. People believe anything they say or write and so much of it is pure baloney. In anything done or written or stated by state or federal government agencies you can bet you are listening to something without any common sense behind it.

       Actually fall webworms, besides being unsightly and leaving small balls of digested leaf droppings beneath the branches, do little damage to the tree either.  But this past week I have put a flame to a half dozen webs full of worms around my home and no trees have shriveled up or burned up or died.  Follow my example, and forsake chemicals, which often kill other creatures, like the small birds that will eat those dead, poisoned larvae.  Chemicals kill humans too, sometimes causing cancer and other diseases later in life by many years than the initial exposure.

 

       When I built my home and office years ago on what we call Lightnin’ Ridge, I added a screened porch which sets about 8 feet off the ground.  Out before it is giant oak, hickory, walnut trees and bird feeders.  You would think nothing new would come to those feeders, but now red-headed woodpeckers are showing up, three of them this morning.  They like to nest near water and I have seen them near my pond before, but never at the feeders.  Maybe they are the most beautiful birds that come there.  Cardinals and grossbills and indigo buntings and goldfinches and hummingbirds are there regularly and perhaps to many one of those would be the most beautiful, but those ‘red-headed peckerwoods’ as my grandfather once called them, are absolutely stunning, bright red, snow white and black.

       For the first time I can recall, two tiny chipmunks scurry back and forth to eat fallen grain beneath the feeders.  They too have been seen often down in the big woods beyond the pond, but never so close to the porch.  Other rarely seen creatures that live here are the grey shrew and a little-but-vicious weasel.  I have photos of both of them.  

There is no doubt this is a rare grey shrew, perhaps one of the only ones ever found north of the Arkansas border.

 

     Some doubt the presence of this silver-colored tiny carnivore, the grey shrew because they are not supposed to exist this far northeast. None have been reported in Missouri, but they are found occasionally in the Ozarks of Arkansas. But the photo leaves little doubt as to what it is.  According to the books, he is really out of his habitat, right here on Lightnin' Ridge. Shrew should never make it through the winter here because they will die if they don’t eat about every four hours. Distinguishing characteristics on the grey shrew include only 28 teeth while other shrews common to the Ozarks have 32. I pried his little mouth open and sure enough, he only had 28 teeth!   You can believe that if you want, and you can see a photo of him on my website, lightninridgeoutdoors47.blogspot.

 

Email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com or send mail to us at Lightnin’ Ridge Publishing,  P.O. Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613