The Worm Army in the North End, and the Men Burning It Out
Ten laborers cut and burn infested trees on the Tacoma Land & Improvement Company's property while the county agricultural commissioner predicts four to six more weeks of caterpillars — then butterflies, and no more trouble.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Work has been commenced on the caterpillar army by the Tacoma Land & Improvement Company. Ten men are at work on the company's property in the North End, cutting down all the affected trees and shrubbery and burning them. The most effective work is being done in the morning, when the caterpillars are feeling sleepy and quiet after their night's feeding and can be tumbled into the fire before they know it.
A representative of the company says: "The only way to exterminate these pests is for every property owner to get after them on his own land. We did not wait for the agricultural commissioner to do this, but went at it ourselves, and that's what other property owners will have to do."
Commissioner Van Holderbeke says that the caterpillars have not appeared on the east side of the Cascades, and are not likely to, the sunshine being a great deterrent to the inroads of the insect. On the other hand, he says, the mild climate of the Sound country offers ideal conditions for the propagation and rapid multiplication of the worms. He says the invasion will last four weeks yet, and may last six weeks in some localities, the worms finally evolving into butterflies and giving no more trouble. When the eggs laid by the worms have once thoroughly hatched out in a given locality, and the nests are destroyed, they give little further trouble to vegetation in that district.
“The most effective work is being done in the morning, when the caterpillars are feeling sleepy and quiet after their night's feeding and can be tumbled into the fire before they know it.”
Before the chestnut and the gypsy moth, Tacoma had its own tent-caterpillar summer — and the same argument about who is responsible for the trees: the land company says every property owner must fight the pest on his own ground, or nobody's yard is safe. The county commissioner's climate theory (wet west side, dry east side) is a recognizable ancestor of how we still talk about which invasive species will take hold where.
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