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mfw
Yeah, this was me this afternoon. (If you’ve never seen Arachnophobia—why on earth haven’t you?) There was less rubber and pesticide and more tweezers and Q-tips and peroxide.
If you don’t know what a squash borer is, you’ve probably never tried raising zucchini (or any other summer or winter squash). Squash borers are the reason why your zucchini plant suddenly mysteriously keels over dead one day and you don’t know why—they lay eggs inside the stems and then the caterpillar bores its way out. It’s kinda like Alien. No, it’s exactly like Alien.
I’ve got 6 or 7 of the cutest little squash plants, just reaching the age when they start to bloom. And the hell of it is, a few days ago I saw the cutest little red-furred and blue iridescent winged fat little moth sitting on top of one of them, and because I didn’t know what it was, I just picked it up and admired it, then let it go. IDK if my inherent love of caterpillars and all lepidoptera could have moved me to actually step on the thing, if I had known then what I know now—that it was an adult squash borer moth—but it would have been close.
MY EVIL NEMESIS CAN’T POSSIBLY BE THIS FUZZY
So anyhow, the bases of almost all of the plants were studded with tiny brown eggs, and I scrubbed them furiously with the Q-tip and the peroxide until I’d gotten all the eggs off. Still have a terrible feeling that my plants are now full of squash plant chest-bursters, but hopefully enough constant vigilance and daily tweezing and scrubbing will save at least some of them.
I’ve heard good things about using Sevin or other noxious chemicals to kill borers, of course, but I’m not about to do that.
