Space Invaders

Invasive species can be found in most places, and sometimes the damage being done can be seen in a shorter time than expected. Take, for example, the ash borer beetle. Its range in the United States has gone from northeastern states like Maine and New York, to the south, and headed west for Colorado and Oregon.

Green shows ash tree range — Red dots are Emerald Ash Borer beetle detection.

I grew up in an area of the midwest where ash trees were constantly incorporated into our days: climbing and swinging, napping in the shade, staring up at the reaching network, or simply observing the presence of a timber giant. The nearby lakes had ash trees scattered all around and the neighborhood felt calm and carefree with all the welcoming shade cast by the branches and leaves.

I grew older, moved away, and forgot about the trees that marked my youth. Time passed, as it does, and I returned to the place where my greatest transformation occurred. But it was nothing like the memory I held. This place, too, had transformed.

What used to be sprinkled with aged titans leading to connecting waterways or the beginnings of forests is now a sparsely-decorated vast lawn. It possesses its own beauty, but it does not compare. It does not welcome the same play, nor does the land seem to hold the same wisdom. It is the dying of elders and a search for what comes next.

A song hangs in the air: all things must pass.

But not all things must be destroyed. This damage was done by the ash borer beetle spreading westward and propagating. The adults eat foliage and cause small damages, but the larvae feed on the tree’s inner bark and disrupt its ability to move water and nutrients.

If you have an ash tree ready for removal here is a disposal guide.

I recently experienced a brand new invader on the eastern end of the United States in Philadelphia: spotted lantern flies.

Since the spotted lantern flies are rather large and don’t bore into anything, you’re likely to notice them upon entering into the area they’re invading (whereas you may not run into an Emerald Ash Borer beetle because they’re small and hidden inside the tree bark).

Spotted lantern flies have similar movement patterns to flying grasshoppers: they jump and fly only to land soon after. Once they spread their wings there is an unexpected display of color — they’re rather pretty. And the nymphs are adorable as they mature into the winged fly.

The spotted lantern fly has been accused of mass destruction and there is research underway to understand the extent of it. What is generally agreed upon is that lantern flies are stressing plants by feeding on sap and producing a waste known as honeydew which promotes the growth of black mold.

Here is an article dispelling some of the potential falsehoods about these creatures.

Since my experience with invasive species is based in destruction and forced change, I began actively killing lantern flies to help control the population (and sate the craving of the immature sadist deep inside some of us). Sometimes destruction feels good, especially if it’s tied to a seemingly righteous cause, but as new research is done and different species find new ways of interacting, a world of possibility opens with the spotted lantern fly.

Spotted lantern flies may help feed honeybees (honeydew for honeybees).

The honeydew they produce as waste is attractive to wasps, yellowjackets, hornets, and honeybees. In a world worried about how honeybees will continue, will the savior come in the form of an invasive species? It would be a much more symbiotic situation than the Ash trees have with the borer beetle. It may be the passing of an old way and development into something altogether different. Hopefully minimizing the carnage.

I reflect on the daily carnage humans cause and the penance that doesn’t come in the form of a foot stomping us out. Only we assess ourselves and other living things as good or bad. Wheat fields at the cost of regenerative farming could be labeled invasive, but it is one of our many, necessary food sources. The plastic scattered across the globe, high and low, is the cost of convenience and profit. In a humorous twist of fate, we have begun to stomp ourselves out.

We have made decisions without foresight and, though the immediate gratification was grand, the future will repackage those decisions in turmoil and struggle. But just like the lantern fly being a possible provider to struggling bee populations, maybe something unpredictable will come from it. Maybe all of this destruction is needed for the collective conscious to move onward into the new. Or maybe we mark the end of a cycle and the opening into a major transition.

Whatever the end result may be, what comes to mind with utmost frequency is — I don’t know.

We don’t know. But we’re always learning and moving for something.

Some of us are destroyers and others are healers. But the healer also destroys and the destroyer also heals.

To be is to welcome paradox. The struggle of living awareness may be the ability to accept life’s paradox. To be able to say I don’t know and feel alright about it. To sit in unsureness and tell yourself that there may not be a simple answer, rather, a complex, individual interpretation that doesn’t exactly match any other experience.

Yet other times it’s easy to know the answer, like taking your ice cream back from the ants…