eucallipterus

Overview of a failed weekend annihilation project.

Or: possibilities and limitations encountered through idle weekend google searches, in the Latin. 

1. Get fed up with your street-parked cars being constantly covered in a sticky layer of sap.
2. Google for an explaination for a while, before realizing you’ll need to identify the kind of tree growing in front of the house first.
3. Recognize that you do not know enough about trees and leaves to even begin to narrow your foliage down using google.
4. Download a leaf-identification app, then fail multiple times at taking a leaf-picture of sufficient quality for the app to recognize.
5. Finally successfully identify the tree as an American Linden (Tilia americana).
6. Use google to find out why cars may be covered in sticky goo if parked under an American Linden tree.
7. Learn that there is a specific type of aphid (Eucallipterus tiliae) that infests American Linden trees.
8. Further, that the aphids attach to the veins of leaves like ticks and let the tree sap run through their tiny bug guts, digesting a small percentage of the nutrients and letting the rest splatter all over any and every object below.
9. Go outside and look at the leaves you can reach, find each leaf covered in dozens of aphids.
10. Return to google, to discover that there is not much one can do for an aphid infestation of several full grown trees.
11. Subsequently learn that ladybugs (Coccinella septempunctata) are actually voracious predators specifically evolved to decimate aphid populations.
12. Learn that you can buy 1500 ladybugs through Amazon (not prime eligible) for $10.
13. Order 1500 ladybugs.
14. Receive a bag full of 1500 ladybugs.
15. Release the approximately 1475 live ladybugs in the bag onto the unsuspecting aphid population at dusk, per the instructions in the box.
16. Check the leaves the next evening, to discover that there are now only one or two aphids per leaf.
17. Go out to the car the next morning, only to learn that it just takes one or two aphids per leaf to keep your car covered in sap.
18. Purchase another three gallons of windshield washer fluid.