Thursday, August 16, 2012

Yellow necked caterpillar, Datana ministra

I love the "gregarious" caterpillars. They're like a school of fish; they move together. You can conduct them by moving your hand back and forth where they can see it. They shift in unison as though they were watching a tennis match. These were enthusiastically consuming one of our wild-collected Chinese oaks. Katie was showing Aurora (the Education Unit intern) around the collection and they discovered them. They brought this guy back to show me. I photographed it and Katie asked, "should I squash it?" I said, "sure but nobody ever wants to do that." Aurora volunteered, rather disturbingly, that she was happy to do it. I don't know about these young people. Anyway after dispatching this one, they got a ladder and went back to eliminate his siblings. My suggestion for disposing of them was a bucket of soapy water. I used to use that for the Gypsy moth caterpillars we trapped in Fern Valley. I passed them later and they were hard at their work though not happy about the caterpillars pooping on them.

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