Little Tree Custodians?

  Each day, I walk the hillside just to have a bit of peace.  It seems that there are certain things that start weighing on my well being and I have to escape for a few minutes.  It is usually during these hikes that I, not only find comfort, but also a lot of interesting critters or plants...sometimes both.  Yesterday morning, Mark and I were strolling along when I saw a black spot on the mimosa trunk.  Aha!  I immediately recognized what was afflicting my tree!  Not that is was particularly a bad thing but, still, it was there.  While some folks may be a bit squeamish about finding a horde of bugs clustering on a tree trunk, I was more interested in photographing them.  I knew what the critters were and could rest easy knowing they were not doing any harm to the tree nor would they do any harm to me.  

  The critters that were forming a tight cluster were bark lice and their clustering told me that the juveniles were being protected.  Obviously, the little rascals had hatched and were still a bit too young to scamper quickly enough to avoid predators.  The adults were rallying around them and keeping them tightly corralled.  The youngsters were being quite well-behaved and were staying right where their papas and mamas told them to stay!

  Most folks have a tendency to think that anything with the name "lice" has to be bad.  Well, while these are called bark lice, they look more like a type of fly.  They live in tight knit communities of anywhere from fifty to a hundred critters.  They do not harm the tree nor do they harm humans.  In reality, they probably do a big job of keeping the tree healthy by eating potentially harmful molds and dead plant material.  

  So, if you find a mass of bark lice on your tree, do not get all gung-ho with the chemical sprays.  The critters are there doing us a favor.  They are like custodians of the trees!  That said, I do not think I would like them to infest inside the Little Bayou House!  That might be a little much even for me!

Lice Infestation!! Oh, No!

The Bayou has received copious amounts of rainfall in the past few weeks.  Normally, I love a good rainy day but this is a tad ridiculous!  Just this afternoon, we have received more than five inches in the gauge and the forecast calls for another six or so tonight.  That is a lot of water to come tumbling from the sky!  Everything outside is soaked and even inside the Little Bayou House, things feel dank. 

With all of this moisture comes mold, mildew and all sorts fungi and lichens.  Mushrooms are popping up in every square foot of the yard and lichens cover most every tree.  In the lichens, I found Bark Lice. These small bugs have quite the "ick" factor about them for no other reason than there are just so many of them!  They seem to cluster together in wads of about a hundred or so on the oak trees in the front yard.  If the rainy season holds, the oak tree trunks will eventually be covered with the fine webbing that these bugs form.  This gives the old oak trees a bit of a ghostly appearance which is a bit unnerving to some folks.  Homeowners become concerned that some critter is infesting their trees!  While the infestation part is true, it is not true that the bugs mean any harm.  They are "people-friendly" and "tree-friendly"!  Although the webbing and clusters of bugs might be a bit unsightly, they do not harm the tree whatsoever.  As far as I can tell, they feed on lichens and not tree sap!

Anyway, I found a goodly sized wad of the Bark Lice near the birdbath.  There were many, many of them on the oak trees but one cluster of them decided that a piece of driftwood would suffice as their home.  I watched the bugs for a bit and was highly amused by the fact that they seem to run around randomly bumping into one another for no apparent reason.  The group was like a bunch of bumper cars at the carnival!  Bump, turn, bump, turn, bump.  Perhaps this was some form of communication but it sure looked a bit awkward to me!