Dan's Papers - June 13, 2008 - The Worms Crawl In

As we all know by now, global warming isn't a theory - we've become painfully aware of the havoc it has wreaked in so many arenas. And now, thanks to temperature changes, another oddity has reared its head.

Inchworms, inchworms. Measuring the marigolds and munching through everything in their path. The reason many of us on the East End have been besieged year after year by this plague of biblical proportions is because of warmer temperatures: The only way the inchworm cycle can be broken is if the temperature stays under 20 degrees for five days in a row.

And now, a word from our sponsor, the Cornell Cooperative Extension. The technical name for the inchworm is "cankerworm" - a disgusting name for a disgusting insect. Cankerworms are native to this country. The larvae (worms) come in green, black and Hamptons-awning black/green stripe. They use the little legs on the front and back of their bodies to hold onto your leaves, clothes, hair, car and skin as they hump along. They also have the annoying habit of spinning down from the trees on silken threads. They prefer oaks, apples and elms, but will eat just about anything, including pine needles. They went after my Japanese maple, ornamental cherry and - the last straw - my son's strawberry plant. The unbridled gluttony goes on for about four weeks until, fat and sated, they drop and bury themselves up to four inches underground in silken cocoons.

It's the unrelenting eating that is most disgusting. As they devour leaves, the pitter-patter you hear is not the sound of crunching. It's far more sinister: It's actually the sound of their "frass" (otherwise known as excrement) falling onto other leaves, your car, hat, etc.

Cankerworms have infested the Northwest Woods in East Hampton for three seasons, including this one. For the previous two years, I toughed it out. Last season, about three weeks into the scourge, Dan's gardening columnist April Gonzales assured me that it would be over soon. And since I'm dead set against using harmful chemicals that are toxic to my family and the East End's groundwater, I did just that - putting off opening the pool and avoiding the outside for a few weeks.

But this year was worse than ever. Overnight they seemed to double in size and quadruple in number. Last Sunday, I reached my moment of truth. Eating a Fearless Frank, I looked out the kitchen window. A gang of cankerworms was positioned on the top of my wheelbarrow handle. Gripping the handle at one end, they stretched toward me like tiny rotten black fingers, curling up as if to dare me to come outside. Other worms swung in front of the window on threads - demented, tiny Tarzans. I lost my appetite.

Later, dressed in date-night finery, my partner and I made the 50-foot dash from our house to the car. For the first part of the trip to Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center, we drove in disgusted silence as I picked worms off our clothing, the car seats and dashboard.

In desperation, I called Gonzales from the car. Living in Southampton north, she also had the problem and, fearing that another season of defoliation would weaken or kill some lovely old oaks on her property, she had opted for the organic treatment Bacillus thuringiensis, or BT, which provided good results. Considering that my property has been chemical-free for three years, I was determined to go that route. I started calling pest control people, leaving desperate, pleading messages to call at once!

Surprisingly, an actual person picked up the phone. Kevin Kavanaugh is a certified arborist and Columbia University graduate with his own business on the East End. When he heard the desperation in my voice, he promised to get to the house on Monday. I told him of my disdain for using harsh chemicals, and he recommended a product called Provaunt. It's "non-neighbor notification" treatment, meaning it requires less regulation than other products. I was still reluctant to use anything but organic, but Kavanaugh told me that, to be effective, BT needs be used very shortly after the worms hatch. It was too late.

"You know, we could take heroine, arsenic, marijuana - and call it organic," Kavanaugh said. "Once a manmade product is introduced it can't be called organic."

The product Kavanaugh used is designed to kill only the caterpillars, not helpful insects like ladybugs. As we walked around the property, he educated me on the difference between the caterpillars and the gypsy moths (hairy, fat, uglier). Despite ads on the radio, the East End is not really affected by gypsy moths this year. According to Kavanaugh, rainy springs have helped minimize that population.

I learned of many other blights on the property: My boxwoods have a leaf miner. The Alberta spruce has mites ("It's in stress," he said). The andromeda has lace bugs. What will I do about it? Probably nothing. I can live with anything but cankerworms. But even if I decided to take action, Kavanaugh explained the modern approach to pest control. "Guys used to come in and bomb everything with pesticides," he said. "Now, you find the problem - like the leaf miner - and you go right up to the boxwood to fix it."

Kavanaugh also explained that the reason for many pests is that, in landscaping, people put things together that look nice but make no sense in the natural world. Where in a Long Island forest would you find an andromeda or boxwood growing naturally under an oak tree? There are Colorado blue spruce throughout the East End and they all have problems. But there's one place where the spruce are unaffected: Colorado.

I left my property, and left Kavanaugh to his work. By the time I got home that night, my partner had already spent over an hour spraying dead cankerworms from the porches and walkways. The property was clean. The next morning, I went to my car and saw not one worm.

I wish I would've been able to go organic and next year, if the situation returns, I will do that. I urge everyone to do the same. We live above our water source here on the East End, and whatever we spray or lay above it, ends up seeping into it. But this season, I had to make a less perfect choice and as a result, I can work in my yard and walk to the car without brandishing a broom like a mad bushman, looking like a character from Ulee's Gold. And as I hope against hope for a frosty winter, I can't help but think that the pests and scourges are nature's way of reminding us that it isn't called the Northwest WOODS for nothing.