Bam!

LBAM is back in the news.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture announced Aug. 29 that it has established a 19-square-mile quarantine straddling portions of two counties after the light brown apple moth (LBAM) was found July 23 in Napa County and Aug. 10 in Sonoma County.

That's bad news all around.

As a leafrolling caterpillar, the light brown apple moth loves grapes. And just about everything else from A to Z: apple, apricot, beans, caneberries (blackberry, blueberry, boysenberry, raspberry), cabbage, camellia, chrysanthemum, citrus, clover, cole crops, eucalyptus, jasmine, kiwifruit, peach, pear, persimmon, plantain, pumpkin, strawberry, tomato, rose and zea mays (corn).

It's a herbivorous generalist.

When I attended the Northern California Entomology Society meeting in May of last year, Alameda County acting ag commissioner Gregory Gee commented about its polyphagous nature: "It even likes pine trees."

Pine trees! Even!

Fact is, Gee said, the pest (Epiphyas postvittana) likes other landscape trees, too, including oak, willow, walnut, poplar, cottonwood and alder.

A native of Australia, LBAM has been found in a dozen counties since retired UC Berkeley entomologist Jerry Powell, a moth taxonomist, first detected the pest in his Berkeley backyard on July 19, 2006.

Controversy swirls over how long the pest has actually been in California and how to battle it. UC Davis entomologist James R. Carey says it's probably been here for years--maybe even decades. Carey doubts that the foreign invader can be eradicated.

But there's no controversy about its appetite.

UC Davis entomologist Frank Zalom, an integrated pest management specialist who researches tree crops, small fruits, vegetables and invasive species, said LBAM's appetite spans 250 hosts--and the spectrum of known hosts continues to grow.

Meanwhile, the moth even has its own song, a no-spray message played by KGO Radio as bumper music. The tune, "Ain't No Moths on Me," written and performed by the Bay Area group, Charity and the JAMband, is as catchy as the Muhammad Ali quote, "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."

LBAM has no stinger but it definitely stings.

A USDA study indicates that, if California becomes generally infested, the moth could cause billions of dollars in crop damage annually. Additionally, it would hinder export opportunities and interstate commerce due to quarantine restrictions, as demonstrated by the quarantines already enacted by Canada and Mexico. California agricultural exports to the two countries totaled more than $2.4 billion in 2006. Source: CDFA press release.

Xena the Warrior Princess sports a butterfly mark on her leg, credentials certifying her as a feline entomologist. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

She has no formal training in the science of insects, but she can catch insects with the best of 'em. Plus, her credentials include a butterfly mark on her leg.

Xena the Warrior Princess is a rescue cat. We first spotted her outside a Costco store in the winter of 2000, the same year our son headed off to college to study computer science and mathematics.

A sign proclaimed "Free kitten!"

Not wanting a kitten, free or not (we already owned an adventuresome calico named Indiana Joan), we started to walk away.

But she was calling my name, this scrawny kitten dressed unabashedly in the same tuxedo colors our son wore while playing double bass for the Sacramento Youth Symphony's Premier Orchestra.

Coincidence? Probably. Fate? Perhaps. Serendipity? Certainly.

I thought about naming her "Free," but husband Jim didn't think that would be such a great idea. You just can't step out on the front porch and yell "Free! Free! Free!"

So Xena the Warrior Princess she became: half-warrior, half-princess, and all kitten. At first, Xena repeatedly performed sofa-to-chair leaps in the family room--antics that prompted friend Marilyn to observe: "I think her mother had an affair with a flying squirrel."

Then came the insects. The butterflies, the beetles (not the kind that play music) the honey bees, the sunflower bees, the carpenter bees and the moths.

(We will not talk about the roof rat and the flicker. They are not insects.)

Every night, or so it seems, our feline entomologist snares a hornworm  moth and eagerly shares it with us. UC Davis entomologist (and apiculturist) Eric Mussen says the mangled specimen (below) is  either a tomato hornworm or  tobacco hornworm.

At least it's not a flying squirrel.

Robert Bugg saw it first.

That's entomologist Robert L. Bugg.

Bugg, who received his doctorate in entomology at UC Davis, does research on the biological control of insect pests; cover crops; and restoration ecology.

And he saw it first.

“Look,” he said. “That praying mantis just bit the head off a pipevine swallowtail butterfly.”

We were part of a field tour, “Yolo County Field Tour of Native Bee Habitat on Working Lands.” Held Wednesday, Aug. 27 and organized by the Native Pollinators in Agriculture Project, the field tour drew representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, California Department of Agriculture, California EPA, and farmers from throughout the country.

We visited seven sites: The Farm on Putah Creek, Butler Farm, Good Humus Farm, Cache Creek Conservancy, Muller Farms, Hedegrow Farms, and the Pioneer Hybrid Seed Farm.

I brought along my camera and a macro lens to capture photos of native pollinators, such as long-horned bees, sunflower bees, sweat bees and bumblebees.

We saw the green praying mantis, disguised as a flower stem or blade of grass, at The Farm on Putah Creek.

It had just snared a pipevine swallowtail butterfly (Battus philenor).

It was survival of the fittest, and the matnis was more than fit. Now he was enjoying a morning meal at the expense of a fluttering butterfly.

The praying mantis (sometimes called a "preying matnis") is an ambush predator. It lies in wait for unsuspecting dinner to arrive.

Mr. Mantis grasped the butterfly in his spiked forelegs and chewed off the head.

It was a good day for a praying mantis, a bad day for a butterfly.

We netted the floundering California lady beetle (Coccinella californica) aka "lady bug," from our swimming pool.

She didn't look like the familiar lady beetle, reddish orange with black spots. One spot was all she had.

And little life left.

Then, slowly, miraculously, she opened her wings to dry out, looking somewhat like a drenched DeLorean with its doors flung open.

She reminded us of the nursery rhyme:

Ladybug! Ladybug!
Fly away home.
Your house is on fire.
And your children all gone.

All except one.
And that's little Ann.
For she crept under
The frying pan.

I don't know if she flew home. She definitely didn't creep under a frying pan.

But our little Hemiptera predator did live to see another day, and perhaps feast on another aphid or two.

Or a scale insect, mealybug or mite.