Notes off a soiled cuff: Caterpillars chew on my memories, and why the topic matters for wildlife

It’s strange how some memories seem to be burned into your brain, even really old ones you would never expect …
More than four decades later, I still clearly remember being in a stand of oaks on a mountainside above Tyrone, during a sunny afternoon at about this time of year. I was a very inexperienced reporter for the Altoona Mirror in 1980, sent out to cover the “new” scourge of gypsy moth caterpillars that was about to defoliate a wide swath of forest in Blair County, Pa.

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