Since March, caterpillars have been spotted everywhere around campus by students and staff. Mostly concentrated in the F-wing, these bugs can cause rashes and have sparked unease among students.
“I have seen the caterpillars. I’ve seen them on the trees, they just fall down and land on your clothes. It’s really unsettling,” junior Luna Gutierrez said. “I’ve also seen them on the roofs, especially in the B-wing; they’re in the F-wing too.”
According to the City of Menlo Park, the caterpillars, known as Western Tussock Moth caterpillars, are frequently found on trees and bushes since they eat primarily from willow and oak tree leaves. The caterpillars typically thrive more in the spring and summer due to rising temperatures. Although they may seem intimidating, they ultimately are not harmful to humans, but can cause skin irritation in some people.
“I remember I was walking in class, I had like five [caterpillars] on my jeans, and I didn’t even realize, and then I got a rash on my arm because of them,” junior Jorge Rochen said.
Some students, especially those who have phobias of bugs, take different paths to get to class to avoid the caterpillars. “Usually I would go straight through, where the trees are at, but now I have to go all the way around,” Rochen said. “[The caterpillars] just dangle, and they usually fall on you.”
On the other hand, some find the insects more bothersome than frightening. “They don’t scare me. They’re just kind of annoying, I guess, but they’ll probably become moths,” freshman Sage Lee said.
In addition to the caterpillars crawling through the halls, they have also made an appearance at the tennis and pickleball courts. “I spent all of P.E. putting the caterpillars on our pickleball racket and moving it away so we wouldn’t step on them,” Lee said.
Western Tussocks are also affecting nearby neighborhoods and residents. “There’s way more [caterpillars] this year, like 100 times more than I’ve ever seen,” Atherton resident Rahul Bhandari said.
“This year has been crazy. We’ve had a lot more caterpillars than any other year,” Amir Motamedi said, who lives in Menlo Park. “Our mailbox probably one day had 20-30 caterpillars on it, just on one side. So yeah, it’s been a crazy year,” he said. Caterpillars make an appearance every year, but this year, there have been way more than in previous years, and they’ve been around for even longer.”
According to an article from the University of British Columbia, the reason for the amount of caterpillars is because of a boom and bust cycle. One year, in the right conditions, there will be lots of caterpillars (the boom) when they hatch in the spring. Because there are so many caterpillars, a disease spreads among them, and their population starts quickly dying off. After, there will be less caterpillars remaining, and then slowly throughout the years, there will be more caterpillars and another boom occurs. This repeats every six to eight years.
“There’s just so many on my house and all over and they were kind of falling on my kids and on me,” Bhandari said. “If you would be sitting outside, they would fall on you. Or if you’re walking along Ringwood to school, you would run into them because some of them hang.”
Motamedi isn’t too concerned about the caterpillars falling on him and his family, but is instead more worried about the negative effect they have on the plants in the area. “I know that some people have some allergic reaction to the hairs of the caterpillars, so that’s not the best thing. The problem I have with them is they’re all over the place and they’re eating my plants. That’s the part that I don’t like,” he said.
“I’ve just been more cognizant and observant of where I’m going, where I’m stepping, anytime I’m outside,” Bhandari added.
To mitigate the caterpillar takeover, the City of Menlo Park also mentioned that they will be working to help remove some of them with non-chemical methods, such as manual removal or water spray treatments, to protect plants.
