The magnificent trees are a hint of forest just a mile north of downtown. People stop in their tracks to marvel at my three cedars. Walkers will stand staring, straight up, at the trees next to a main drag in Everett.
A home to birds and squirrels, they shade the lawn, curb the street noise and offer a year-round view of green boughs from our upstairs bedrooms.
I get nervous – very nervous – when anyone messes with my trees. Last week, someone did.
A bright-green, tent-shaped cardboard trap is pinned to the bark of the middle tree’s trunk. The day the trap appeared, I found a flier on my doorknob. “Sorry we missed you,” it says. I was sorry, too. A face-to-face meeting might have saved me a phone call.
After talking with Jim Marra, managing entomologist with the state Department of Agriculture, my nerves are calm. And my trees are safe – for now. An urban tree hugger, I’m now part of a good fight. The trap is “an important tool in the fight against the gypsy moth,” the flier says.
Traps are put out, one per square mile, for use in an annual survey to detect gypsy moths, Marra said Monday. The insect pests already have denuded forests in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Marra explained that although gypsy moths are accidentally carried into our state each year, in egg masses attached to picnic tables, outdoor toys and such or on foreign ships in port, no permanent population of the moths has been established here.
Since the 1970s, the state has been aggressive with summer trapping and spring eradication programs.
Thanks to information gathered from traps, gypsy moth ground treatment was done in Bellevue last month, and spraying recently was completed in Seattle’s Madison Park area.
I peeked inside our trap’s open-ended triangle but saw no moths. The sticky-looking stuff, Marra said, is a synthetic version of the pheromone that female moths emit to attract males. It’s odorless to humans, and harmless.
The trap will stay until fall, and a trapper – he or she will carry photo identification – will stop by every two weeks or so to check it. If a gypsy moth is found, Marra said, 25 traps will be placed in the square mile around my house. More moths, and the number of traps will grow to 64.
Trappers look for evidence of egg masses or multiple life stages.
The weapon, Marra said, is Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki, a commercial product made from a naturally occurring bacterium.
The bug “is a natural pathogen of gypsy moths, concentrated in a spray,” Marra said. “It has a very good safety record. There are always some people affected, but we’ve had very few complaints.”
Marra said the European gypsy moth, a plague to East Coast forests, favors deciduous trees.
The Asian gypsy moth, found at the Port of Tacoma in the late 1990s, is potentially more damaging here because it feeds on evergreens. It could spread quickly because female Asian gypsy moths can fly, which isn’t true of the European variety.
Speaking of evergreens, don’t mess with mine. And they are mine.
Our big cedars are in a parking strip between the sidewalk and the street. “The trees are the property owners’,” said Dale Preboski, spokeswoman for the city of Everett. “Generally speaking, the parking strip is your property to do with as you wish, unless your use interferes with traffic or violates some law or policy. You have title to the property to the center of the street.”
The city, she said, “can affect your use to the extent necessary to maintain its streets and sidewalks on the right of way.”
Last summer, the city trimmed the street side of my cedars high enough to allow clearance for trucks. A city worker at the time floated the idea that my giant trees should someday be cut down. I made no secret of my distaste for that idea.
Those massive trees have been there for decades, visible from miles away. They’re healthy, and the sidewalk is fine. Every fall, I rake, and put what I rake up into the yard waste recycling bin, and don’t cause the city any trouble.
I’m relieved to hear the trap is meant to save trees, not target them for removal. “If we caught hundreds of gypsy moths, we would not cut your cedar trees,” Marra said.
Good call.
Don’t mess with my trees. And don’t mess with my moth trap.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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