Gypsy moth caterpillars suck a taint.

The Sciencette and I rounded up some biologists to go camping this weekend, but nature gave us the shaft. The Raystown Lake area is experiencing a gypsy moth caterpillar (think tent worms) infestation. These things were everywhere. They'd fall on you out of the trees, crawl up your legs, and make cocoons in your camping gear.

Unbeknownst to me, one crawled up the inside of my pant leg, and when I bent my knee to do something, it exploded against my skin in a shower of chlorophyllic gore. I basically didn't care at the time, but thinking about it now make me want to puke shards of my own pelvis. Also, I hope the stain comes out.

I killed a bunch of the things by various means:

• shoe
• poking stick
• fire
• fish hook
• Ford Escape

but that didn't even make a dent in the millions and millions of them crawling around.

The Sciencette was about ready to nuke the whole area. She was on the wrong side of healthy to begin with and hates creepy-crawlies as much as the next molecular geneticist, so an army of taint fisting caterpillars didn't make the situation any better. I think she highly considered going home early and/or stabbing me.

The only good thing about the whole situation is that the Army Corps of Engineers is dropping Bacillus thuringiensis all over the infected area. That's a soil bacterium that colonizes caterpillar guts and secretes endotoxins that paralyze those wiggly bastards. Had I known that biological warfare was in order, I would've brought some of my shit from the lab.

Kill you caterpillars! Kill you dead.