Japanese Beetles

July 9, 2006

Hi Susie,

I grew up right near Asbury Park, in a little community called Shark River Hills. It wasn't a river, and there were only sand sharks, but there were hills, and lots of woods and swamps. It was fairly untouched back then, a great place to be a kid. When we were very young we used to have infestations of Japanese beetles, millions of them, and the grownups would pay the kids to eradicate them. They gave us milk bottles (I know I'm dating myself) half filled with gasoline, and we would walk around the neighborhood all day picking the beetles of the hedges and shrubs and dropping them in the bottles. We got a penny for every ten beetles we "gassed." We knew even at that tender age that these were slave wages, but all the kids were doing it so we had fun. We also had to collect the tent caterpillars, which would destroy the sassafras trees and mountain laurel. We couldn't do anything about the mosquitos which, because we lived next to swampland, were a plague every summer. We just got bit a lot.

That's more information than you asked for. Your image of Japanese beetles flashed me back, like a crumb of madeleine.

Hope you had a good day in the garden. See you soon. Albest, W