Inch Worms are the caterpillar form of Geometer moth's, family is Geometridae.
The reason that they are called "Inch Worms" is the way they get around by inching along. They lack legs in the middle of their body with only legs in the front and back. Not only that, they are roughly 1 inch long! They are green, gray, brown and will hide from predators but if it was the way it was a few weeks ago in Hanover county it didn't matter because there were so many.
I heard that they were worst off in other parts of the county. Our mail box was covered for a long time with web and their bodies, mother wasn't happy.
In the news, a lot of people reported problems with them being all over the place. the specialist stated that these inch worms once every decade will be in a super large number when they appear at the time.
We had used a broom about every half hour to knock down the webbing on our door step. There were way too much.
So it is unfortunate but there was so many that they ate more leaves from the trees then normal. We have a lovely dogwood tree in our front yard and at the same time that it bud out leaves and their gorgeous flowers is when the horde attacked. We now have a bare tree and many more large 80 foot trees that have half their leaves. We have more sun in our back yard then we usually have this time of year. So weird.
I didn't walk in the woods for awhile for the fear of getting inch worms constantly in my hair or in my shirt. The webbing was literally everywhere and the worms would be hanging from trees at all places the eye could see.
Hope you enjoyed that!
Sources: Wikipedia
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