Revenge of the Wasps

Yesterday morning I took a branch off one of the beautiful oak trees in our new back yard to be examined by the staff at Millcreek Gardens. I had noticed a particularly large amount of puffy, green nodules on the branches that seemed to be killing the trees.

I was told that the nodules were called "galls and that they were caused by a tiny, silver-winged wasp that creates them to house its larva.

The kind man at Millcreek told me that unfortunately there was not much I could do, but removing the galls might help. Well, better said than done. There are thousands of these galls on our trees. Regardless, I set about walking through my back yard with a large garbage bag in hand, determined to pluck as many of the little suckers off as I possibly could. 

Tonight as we were driving home we ran into what I believe was an indignant group of these ferocious little beasts. Thousands of the winged things began pelting the car as we stopped at our local gas station. They were literally raining from the sky like some cliched 1960s creature flick. I could hear Jason screaming as he quickly pumped a couple gallons into the car. We got out of their as quickly as possible. I have never seen anything like it! My skin is still crawling. Yuck! Jason said the lights must have attracted them, but I have to wonder if they were really just getting their revenge.