BAGWORMS!

The polite term for a bagworm (Malacosoma californicum) is tent caterpillar. The more I see of them the more I think "tent caterpillar" is waaay too polite. My wife, from Ohio, says "Bagworm" and as time goes by I agree more and more. What an ugly expression.

Bagworms have a marvelous survival technique. They 'eclose' and immediately begin to enclose their lunchroom in a tough web of spinnings ... they live behind the veil. As they grow the bag grows. Birds cannot penetrate the bag and I doubt they'd want to; I understand the worms do not taste very good.

The worms can nearly denude a chokecherry tree. They usually don't kill a bush, but they leave it looking like a skeleton at the end of the summer. They often hit the same bush year after year. It's a wonder the bushes live after such abuse.

This year I picked the bags and gave the little colonies the coup de grace. And LO! the bush produced the nicest, fattest chokecherries you ever saw. We just spent the morning cleaning a huge boxful that my daughter-in-law and two grandsons picked. Pounds! of chokecherries.

I believe, deep down, that bagworms have a place in the larger scheme, but Lordy!, they can eat an apple tree down to bones, digest everything tender in a chokecherry bush, and, in general, are nasty little critters.

And "bagworm" is a great thing to call someone in an argument.