They say Ohio is a place of firsts. I’m not sure who “they” are, but we had a commercial here on TV for a while, talking about all of Ohio’s firsts.
Well, I’ve found another.
On this date, August 3, 1921, the first aerial crop dusting took place in Troy, Ohio. Its mission? To kill caterpillars.
Now, I’m no farm girl, but I do know that caterpillars turn into butterflies. My first thought when I read this “first” was, “I hope they weren’t Monarchs.” On the other hand, I’m sure those caterpillars were doing exactly what they were made to do. They were living their little lives. And the resulting side effect was bad for farmers’ crops.
I’ve learned a few things about caterpillars over the years, since my city girl days, when we used to call them inchworms.
Caterpillar’s main job is to eat. During its little larval stage, the caterpillar must consume enough to sustain itself through its pupal stage and into adulthood. Growing up is hard to do. But, if a caterpillar isn’t getting enough nourishment, it might still reach maturity — it just won’t be able to produce eggs.
(Have you ever tried to crack caterpillar eggs? Impossible.)
Seriously, caterpillars will eat an enormous amount during each life cycle stage. The time span is typically several weeks. Some of those little crawlers consume 27,000 times their body weight during their lifetime. If that seems like a lot, the average person eats about 35 tons of food during a lifetime. Yes, we much down about 1,500 pounds of food a year. So why isn’t anyone crop dusting us?
Anyway, those little wigglers increase their body mass by as much as 1,000 times. Sometimes even more than that. Their larval stage is all about growth. They eat, they grow, and they molt. And then they do it again.
Here’s another thing about them. They would do well in the Olympics, I think. A caterpillar has around 4,000 muscles in its little body. That’s just crazy. If we compare humans, again, we have just 650 muscles in our considerably larger bodies.
Wait. There’s more.
Caterpillars have 12 eyes, but they don’t see very well.
And, they only have six legs. True legs. We see way more legs on caterpillars, but most of those legs are false legs called prolegs. Those fake ones are there to help them hold onto plant surfaces and allow them to climb.
And finally, just like at the baseball games, caterpillars move in a wave. That lovely, beautiful wave.
Back to Troy, Ohio. So yes, today is the 100th anniversary of the first aerial crop dusting.
It was an experiment set up by the Ohio Department of Agriculture. It would become the first documented use of an airplane to apply crop protection materials. Sometimes we dust things off. Other times, we dust things on.
Ohio researchers were desperate for a way to prevent sphinx moth caterpillars from devastating the state’s valuable Catalpa tree crop. The idea of controlling the caterpillars with insecticide dust dropped from an airplane was a bit far-fetched back then. Farmers were used to spreading insecticides by hand. And, of course, aviation was still just starting out.
But, U.S. Army test pilot Lt. John Macready took off from McCook Field in Dayton for the task. He applied the insecticide from a World War I surplus biplane. The plane had been fitted with an improvised spreader device to smooth the dust evenly.
And, it worked. They killed all the caterpillars. And the Catalpa trees could be cut down to stumps and used for telegraph poles and such. The humans would start spreading those poles across the land, along with telephone and electric poles. And more.
In the end, though, those caterpillars were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing. And that is how we go.
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“Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just.”
― Victor Hugo
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“Fairness does not mean everyone gets the same. Fairness means everyone gets what they need.”
― Rick Riordan, The Red Pyramid
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“Nothing is fair in this world. You might as well get that straight right now”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
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The day the caterpillars died
