martinzoo

Yesterday we went out and bought some trees. I’m so excited! I get really happy when we plant something new in the ground… we should do it more often, huh? We got a little pecan tree and I wish it was older so we could have pecans right away. We also got a Poplar Tree. These trees grow really fast and I glad because we need more shade in the back yard. We were devastated in 2003 when Hurricane Isabelle came thundering through our area and decimated our back yard. We lost over 50 trees and our back yard looked like a bunch of humongous Lincoln logs all dumped out on the ground. So each year we try to put some more trees in to replace the ones we lost.

We were horrified to discover that one of the Crabapple trees we put in a couple of years ago had a webbed sack on the junction between the main branches of the tree. And inside this sack were gazillions of little caterpillars.

So here is the nasty part. Since I’m trying to include more Science and nature into our homeschooling studies, GB and I dutifully made a little habitat from an old pretzel container, left over from one of Jabem’s LAN parties. We added a lot of leaves and grass and then snipped off a little branch from the tree and stuck it into the habitat. Then we carefully (even though I was grossed out) scraped the sack off the tree and plopped it into it’s new habitat. I covered it with panty hose to keep those suckers contained. And then my husband and I proceeded to clean off our precious tree.

For a while I worried that we had disrupted the sack too much when we moved them, but after about an hour they started rebuilding, and eating, and moving around. Today they have laid more eggs and have a very visible web that they are recreating. There must be about a hundred of the little critters in there and I don’t really know whether we’ll be able to keep all of them until they morph. Have any of you out in cyber-land ever done this? Maybe I should get rid of a bunch of them.

Here are the pics. Skip it if you’re squeamish……… I probably would.. LOL!

After observing for a while, we came into the computer room and looked them up on the internet. They are called Eastern Tent Caterpillars. They won’t give us pretty butterflies, but it should still be interesting to watch the process.