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Show 71 JUST STUFF by jam yL :'J Yikes! My house has been quarantined! quar-antined! Rather, the area in which my house is located has been quarantined. quar-antined. The dreaded Gypsy moth has set up shop and, for fear of spreading the nasty little critter elsewhere, Olympus Cove has been . quarantined. Luckily, this quarantine won't be like the one my mother talks about. When my brothers and sister (; were all at the toddling age my ! mother got placed under quarantine. She had to spend six lonely weeks ! sequestered in the living room, 't while the rest of the family roamed j the house. I No, we're not stuck in our houses, but anything that leaves the area, cars, trailers, trash, bikes, motorcycles, anything, has to be inspected prior to leaving, all because be-cause of the Gypsy moth! What you may ask is a Gypsy moth? It's a little moth, not unlike the kind that flits around your light globe in the summer. But these moths have a yen for greenery oak brush in particular and the prolific pesky pests can strip a forest clean in no time. They're called "Gypsy moths" because of their tendency to go in to an area, clean out all the food, then move on. Now, the female moth can't fly; consequently, you i would think that makes moving to another area a bit difficult. No sir-rcc! sir-rcc! Like other moths, the Gypsy ! starts out as an egg. The mom j moth lays her eggs, and mind you, i ill not just a few dozen. One mother moth can be responsible for thousands! thou-sands! The caterpillars hatch from the eggs, and, in time, work their way to the moth stage. Actually, it's not the moths that we're worried about. The area has been quarantined to keep from spreading the eggs the little beasts lay. They tend to lay their eggs, all 50 million, cither on tree branches or man-made objects. Of course, 'tis the season to clean up the yard, which means clip those bushes and cut those tree branches. Consequently, Conse-quently, this summer all our yard garbage will have to be inspected for little bitty eggs, otherwise the moth will move in the neighborhood neighbor-hood of the city dump. Unfortunately, it's not just the trash we have to worry about. As I mentioned, they lay their eggs on man-made things and they are especially fond of the under carriages of vehicles. They'll lay their eggs underneath cars, in the wheel carriages of trailers, on the tongue of a boat trailer, underneath a camper. If someone from Olympus Cove took a trip to visit grandma in California, they might be transporting thousands of these unwanted soon-to-be moths. While it might necessitate the folks in my neck of the woods to take some extra precautions we'll have to inspect our trash, our vehicles, vehi-cles, our boats, our trailers, actually anything that goes out of the area, for the critter's eggs, and we'll have to put up with some massive spraying it will be worth the trouble. These blasted moths can gel in and destroy entire forests, stripping all the trees, the shrubs and bushes clean of leaves. And while this destroys a lot of beauty, it also destroys the watershed which we rely on for our water! And I must commend the Gypsy moth people. They've done a super job of making the people aware of what's going on, how the problem should be dealt with and what can and will be done. And they're doing what they can to eradicate the problem. |