Green Worms of Spring

Spring is my absolute favorite season. I love everything about it – the cool mornings, warm afternoons, birds singing after their winter confinement and nesting in my hanging ferns, tiny eggs waiting to hatch into fledglings learning to fly, wildflowers sprouting up everywhere, the green of trees and grass. I love it all. Except the green worms.

Just when spring is really starting to bust out all over, they appear. You know they are coming when you see the green pollen dust lightly covering your patio table and your car in the driveway. Invariably, at the very end of March or beginning of April I’ll see the first one. Hanging from an invisible thread, a small light green inchworm appears. And suddenly you see them everywhere – hanging from the trees, crawling on my watering can, inching along the railing of my upstairs porch, swinging in the wind while poised to drop strategically into my hair if I’m not paying close attention.

When I go out to fill the bird feeder or refill the birdbath with fresh water I need an umbrella for protection. Try sweeping the patio while holding an umbrella – I just can’t get that to work. But I can’t stand the thought of those little green worms dropping into my hair or on my clothes, so light weight that I won’t notice it until I see them and then I’m doing the ‘get this thing off me!’ dance. I know they don’t hurt you, and they don’t harm the trees just by eating their leaves. They are just annoying.

A quick internet search will tell you what I’m talking about. These worms love oak trees, and our back yard is all about the gorgeous oaks. Hard to believe the eggs for these suckers are laid in May inside tree cracks and don’t hatch until late March. Fortunately I forget about them when I can’t see them; it would be creepy thinking about the fact those green worms are always present. I guess the good news is they are food for birds, and I LOVE my backyard birds.

So I’ll get through my favorite month, green worms and all. I just hope I don’t have to do that dance.