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Home > A little help from my friends

A little help from my friends

March 21st, 2006 at 05:09 am

Yesterday I noticed that my ash tree has webworms.



(image from http://www.realgreenlawns.com/austin_tx_texas/webwormsx.htm)

Today I noticed there were wasps hovering around the web. Being the curious person I am, I decided to go check out what they were doing.

It appeared they were looking for a way into the webs. So, I grabbed a stick and poked at the web a little.

It didn't take long. In minutes, there was a wasp crawling in the hole I had made. Boy those caterpillars were scrambling to fix their web.

That wasp walked around trying to grab caterpillars. They were dropping to the ground (where they will most likely die or be eaten by birds) and finally it grabbed one. It quickly stung the caterpillar 3-4 times (it was really fast, it looked like a muscle spasm) then bit it a few times and rolled it up. Then it grabbed it and flew off with it.

YAY!! In a few minutes, that wasp killed several webworms (which aren't that harmful in reality, just extremely unsightly) and I suspect it will be back. I'm pretty sure it was taking the caterpillar back to stuff in its nest to feed its developing larvae.

THIS is why I don't kill wasps. Wasps are predators of harmful insects. I do watch to be sure they aren't building nests in areas where we will disturb them. But if they're building a nest in a far corner of my eave - why mess with it?

Less than helpful was my neighbor's boyfriend. He decided my 3 inch grass needed to be weedeated and cut down my vine. The vine that dh and I had been carefully weeding around (it really was obvious). His excuse "I didn't know when you were going to cut the grass". It was 3 inches high. It was just now time to even consider cutting it. It's our yard! Stay off. Oh and his other excuse "I didn't see it". Yeah, I spoke with the previous owner and she told me you did the same thing last year. So, you just hate vines, right? You can't keep yourself off of other people's property? What?

I'd better not catch him spraying anything on my yard. We are organic and plan to stay that way.

8 Responses to “A little help from my friends”

  1. dmontngrey Says:
    1142939991

    Wow, that's really neat about the wasp and caterpillars. Thanks for sharing!

  2. Thrifty Ray Says:
    1142956270

    Maybe those wasps can help you out with that neighbor too???

    (just kidding...teehee)

  3. kashi Says:
    1142961392

    sounds like it's time for a fence.

  4. cercis Says:
    1142985608

    Ray, I am soooo giggling over here.

    A fence won't work, unfortunately because our property lines are all screwed up. The houses are build like 3 inches from the line, so each neighbor to the west maintains the yard to the east. Which was fine because we knew they had discussed the plantings, etc and we worked out that we would take care of our portion of the front yard. But he didn't get it.

  5. This is a wonderful wealth of information. Good Luck! Says:
    1145510123

    This is a wonderful wealth of information. Good Luck!

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