Denise Duperre still remembers her father coming home from a day of cutting trees around Madawaska when she was 11 or 12. He shook caterpillars out of his hair into the bathroom sink.
“The caterpillars would fall out of his hair and wash down the drain,” Duperre said. “It was so gross. You didn’t want to look, but you couldn’t look away.”
It seems everyone who lived in northern Maine in the late 1970s to early 1980s — the time frame of the last major tent caterpillar infestation — has their own creepy-crawly story of caterpillar encounters.
Some talk of hosing down entire sides of homes covered with the caterpillars. Others remember using snow shovels to fill barrels with them as they crawled across driveways. And, once heard, no one can forget the “popping” sound made when they are stepped on or driven over.
These stories crept to the surface this week after reports of a fresh invasion in Blue Hill where so many of the Malacosoma disstria are congregating along a 2-mile stretch of Minds Road — also known as Route 176 or Route 15 — that they have created a driving hazard. The state has posted a traffic advisory warning motorists of slippery conditions.
The County is pleased to feature content from our sister company, Bangor Daily News. To read the rest of “Return of ‘gross’ caterpillars to Maine spurs fears of infestation,” an article by contributing Bangor Daily News staff writer Julia Bayly, please follow this link to the BDN online.
