Maine is One of the Only Places Cursed by Browntail Caterpillar Rash

I'm already on my third round of the rash.

It's only the 1st of June, and I'm on Round 3 of browntail moth caterpillar rash. It's nuts this year. I've had it on my legs, and two different spots on my neck. Luckily, we still have a pile of the popular local remedy kicking around, so I haven't suffered too badly. But everywhere I look in my yard, I can see them popping all over the place. And they're crawling around everywhere, all over everything.

On social media, towns all over Maine have gone to great lengths to try and mitigate the issue as much as possible, but the caterpillars are still everywhere in people's yards. Unless you own a cherry picker, you're not going to be able to reach most of the nests that are quite east to spot the rest of the year.

Are we the only ones who suffer?

Brown Tail Moths are an invasive species that thrives in a lot of places in Europe and Asia, and was accidentally introduced in Massachusetts in the late 1800's. In those spots, they were able to introduce a fly that was intended to kill a different species of moth, but it like the browntails as well, so most other places got rid of them moths/caterpillars. But not before they reached Maine.

Around here, the population in Maine has been steadily on the rise. It's at the point now it's crazy. But if you talk to anyone outside of New England, they're likely to have no idea what we're talking about. So here we are up in the Northeast, suffering in our own private hell with the fallout from browntail moth caterpillars. We're literally alone in our suffering.

You can try to get a handle on them, but good luck with that. There's just so many, it seems like we'll probably just spread them around to the rest of New England eventually. Or, we'll just stand here all alone, like we have been for the last 100+ years, scratching our bodies all over, and wondering why Mother Nature abandoned us.

Let's hope they figure it out...