Scale Crawlers

In a previous post, I wondered how you could tell if an immobile, waxy, hemispherical insect was alive or dead. Last night, we dragged out our microscope, grabbed a leaf sample off of Momma Daisy and took a 40x scan of the situation. There, we found a scale crawler, wriggling very slowly. It looked something like this.


The wings were gone and the thing seemed to be dying. It was probably in its last stages of life after mating. What's interesting is that it was found on a broad part of a leaf just a few days after I sprayed the plant with an insecticide designed to kill scale. Because of the location of the leaf and how heavily I sprayed, there was no way this bug's location didn't get whacked and yet the thing survived. Clearly, the nuclear option is called for. Starting tomorrow, we'll be experimenting with our various forms of asphyxiation. Since I now have a means of determining if the villains are alive or dead, we will be able to determine if our experiments are successful.

Our Maximum Leader has taken personal command of this important effort. Here, she is examining computer data after having seen the enemy through the microscope.