It wasn't until I sat down in the driver's seat and looked out my windshield that I noticed it--those telltale drops of "honeydew," which could only mean one thing--the aphids were back.
Or maybe they weren't aphids. They could have been some other sucking insect such as scale or mealy bugs. Whatever they were, they were making dinner out of my sweet gum tree that spreads its high branches over the driveway where I park the car.
They come every five years or so and don't do any obvious damage to the tree so we do nothing. The idea of using a chemical to kill them is out of the question. The tree is over forty-feet tall and would require copious quantities of both labor and money, not to mention how it would poison the air and ...well, no!
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| One of the hungry cedar waxwings. |
And wouldn't you know it? Nature has her ways of taking care of things. One day last week I heard the distinctive trill of the cedar waxwing. Usually they come to steal my blueberries later in the season so I thought it odd that they were here in early June. Looking up, I discovered twenty or thirty of them in the tree, pecking away, obviously enjoying the tasty, offending bugs.
Isn't nature something? It's all very symbiotic if humans don't get in too big of hurry to remedy things.
(Also published on Mundane Alley)
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