July 23, 2001 Monday

Lawn Today, Lunch Tomorrow; 'True Army Worm' Infestation Is Plaguing Homeowners, Farmers by Devouring Crops and Back Yards in Only Days

Pamela Ferdinand, Special to The Washington Post

DUXBURY, Mass.

Here in serene suburbia, Ellen Rosen had a green lawn. Overnight, it started to turn brown, and what Rosen spied from her backyard deck sent shivers down her spine: thousands of tiny, striped caterpillars standing upright on blades of grass and assiduously chewing each one down to the ground.

When she walked on the lawn, they crunched underfoot and bled green. They slid through basement walls and crept into her house in such large numbers that her cat refused to go downstairs.

"I dreamed one night that one of these worms started growing and growing and growing . . . and exploded. It was awful," said Rosen, a biologist. "My husband was concerned about the damage to the lawn, but I was freaked about the insects. I don't like things that crawl, and everywhere I turned, there were these horrible little worms."

Like a scene out of a Hitchcock film, grassy lands in the Northeast, Midwest and beyond are being marauded by an insect that moves in battalions from one food supply to another -- the aptly named "true army worm." The creature is technically a caterpillar, and one historical account of an 18th-century army worm infestation described "Multitudes of a Kind of Brownish Streaked Worm, as have been very distructive to the Fruits of the Earth."

Their behavior does not seem to have changed. From Arkansas and Indiana to New Jersey and Maine, farmers and homeowners have reported fields and lawns so thick with worms that the ground appeared to be moving. Roads are smeared with collections of dead insect bodies that resemble oil slicks and have to be sanded.

Corn, wheat, rye and barley crops have been stripped to their stalks, left like pencils in the ground in the worst army worm infestation in decades. Hay fields ready for harvest have been decimated, reducing cattle feed and endangering milk production.

Meticulously manicured landscapes, from Rosen's lawn in this town south of Boston to portions of golf courses and racetracks, have been left nearly bald overnight, while nearby grass is untouched, for reasons no one can explain.

Although there is a lull now in many regions as the caterpillars quietly cocoon, a second outbreak -- which promises another round of devastation and the potential emergence of millions of moths -- could occur in a matter of weeks, entomologists said.

"People better be aware, because they can eat faster than anything I've seen," said Byron Gough, a farmer in west-central Indiana who lost 15 acres of pasture in three days.

The army worm typically restricts its damage to the South, where as many as six generations can appear in one season. But scientists suspect thunderstorms and last month's Tropical Storm Allison carried moths north before they laid their eggs, and unusual spring weather sustained unprecedented numbers against parasites and disease.

The army worm is technically a smooth caterpillar known as "pseudaletia unipuncta." It feeds on plants belonging to the grass family and causes temporary damage above ground, eating blades and upper parts of stems, according to entomologists.

The worms have four life stages -- moth, egg, larva and pupa. Adult moths are about one inch long and tannish brown in color, with a tiny white dot in the center of each forewing.

It is not clear whether the army worm can survive winter conditions here, and experts say it is nearly impossible to predict what will happen next because of the unusual extent of this infestation. In states such as Indiana, a field or two is hit every year. But even John Obermeyer, a Purdue University extension entomologist, said he had not experienced anything like this in his lifetime.

"Most of us are flying by the seat of our pants," said Tim Simmons, a restoration ecologist with Massachusetts Wildlife.

Northern New England continued to feel the effects of the outbreak this week. St. Johnsbury, among the hardest hit towns in Vermont, called a community meeting to address the damage. One farmer tried to rescue 300 acres by harvesting them in less than two days; others lost their entire second hay crop, said Willie Gibson, a sustainable agriculture specialist with the University of Vermont's Extension Service.

Farm Service Agency officials have asked farmers in some regions to submit damage estimates, but they say it is too early to estimate total claims. The severity of farm losses and the extent of insurance coverage will determine federal aid eligibility. Pest alerts continue to be updated. Experts on a Vermont Internet site instructed farmers to check fields immediately.

"It's pretty serious," Gibson said. "I don't know if this is going to break many farms, but we've seen a lot of costs and they are really going to strain them this winter," when there may be a shortage of feed.

"For farmers who have had worms crawling over their farms for two weeks, it just makes them feel like they are really under attack," he said.

Jim Davis, a Maine dairy farmer, sprayed around his corn field and nearly half of his grass land in New Sharon to ward off the worms. But by then, they had already eaten the equivalent of 500 square bales of dry hay worth as much as $ 4,000 and all of the grass in his alfalfa field. His cows subsequently lost substantial amounts of weight.

"A difference between a day or two is a difference between whether you catch [the worms] or they clean out a field," Davis said.

Army worms are sometimes difficult to detect because they typically march and feed at night and in cloudy weather, and every situation requires a different approach, entomologists said. By the time most damage is done, insecticides are unlikely to help because the worms are almost fully grown and nearly finished feeding.

Brian Feldman, regional technical manager for TruGreen Companies, a lawn and landscape service, said his office has received thousands of phone calls from customers in New Jersey, Delaware, Eastern Pennsylvania and New York. His advice: fertilization and irrigation.

Reseeding and resodding may be necessary in cases of severe infestation, but mowing the lawn does not help, he said. (A Minnesota homeowner formed a wall around his yard with 280 feet of lawn edging and smeared the outside with petroleum jelly. In a telephone interview, he said it worked.)

Most lawns should recover in a few weeks with adequate irrigation, one entomologist said. But farmers face tougher choices. Several states have asked the Environmental Protection Agency for emergency exemptions to use an insecticide not usually permitted on pastures and hay crops, and last month, Missouri Gov. Bob Holden (D) asked the federal government to declare 70 ravaged counties a natural disaster. The exemptions are likely to be granted, an EPA official said.

Any progress will come too late for Jeff Ebert, a Ferdinand, Ind., farmer whose land was devastated in May. A summer drought and hard winter could leave his farm without any cattle feed, he said.

"You can scout a field one day, and a day later, they have half of it eaten already. I guess that's why they call them army worms," he said.

He added, in a half-hearted joke, "We should have planted navy beans."