Rinse & Repeat

Mother Nature seems to be stuck in a wash cycle that features way too many rinses and repeats. The rains just keep on coming. We’re definitely not complaining about the abundant moisture after the past few years of drought. Personally, I’m loving seeing all the green up here. The pastures are rebounding and the waterholes are staying fairly full. There’s one small nitpick, though: perhaps She could space out the four inches of rain over two days instead of two hours? We like having the roads and railways in good operator-friendly condition.

There’s a lot of mowing going on, when a person can find a bit of dry time. I feel like I’ve already mowed more this spring than I did all of last summer. It’s not even really summer yet! It feels like summer, but the calendar says it isn’t. And I’ve no complaints about warm weather, either.

The moth explosion this spring has been nuts, hasn’t it? These particular ones are known as millers. I finally got curious enough to ask Safari why that is. Apparently, the scales on their wings tend to flake off easily and copiously, such that they reminded the European people of millers - you know, those whose occupation was to mill wheat into flour. That is also why the plant Auricula (botanical name Senecio cineraria) is called the dusty miller. “Millers, by the nature of their work” were “famously dusty.”

Those of us of a certain age know the phrase “it’s Miller time.” Of course, that referred to a frothy adult beverage. Right now, though, we’re referring to the moth migration. Yes, they are migrating westward from Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming, in search of flowers. Luckily, they don’t bite, sting, or chew clothing. They do leave a brownish stain in their wake. And they’re annoying as all get-out, bumbling into your face suddenly. Some few people are allergic to their dust. They do migrate back to the midwestern plains to lay their eggs/form larvae.

I’ve been vacuuming them off the walls, lamps, and windows this past week. It’s kind of satisfying to whisk them away to their doom. You can also use the vacuum to suck up flies and the occasional spider. (I also do this with the box elder bugs in the fall.) Of course, they do build up a stink in the vacuum cleaner bag. I’ll have to change that out after the morning sweep tomorrow. (They are slowing down. I’m not getting nearly as many lately.)

These moths started out life as army cutworms. (Maybe. It’s like the old chicken or the egg debate: which came first?) Cutworms feed on leafy plants and grasses. The worms hide underground (about one inch deep), and emerge at night to gorge themselves on your valued vegetation. Underground, they’ll chew through the roots of your plants, thus the term “cutworm”. As moths, they pollinate lots of plants as they feed on flower nectar. They’re also feed for birds, bats, and bears. (Bears can down 10,000 per day. Perhaps we needed to restock bears rather than wolves here in northeastern Montana? Maybe not. I’d rather battle moths with a vacuum than fight a large predator that could view me as prey.)

One nice bit of info I saw is that while there’s no shortage of moths right now, most moths will not survive the summer. That hopeful note means there shouldn’t be so many cutworms next summer. The moths strategy for survival is in sheer numbers: enough will survive to keep on reproducing.