Clashing, crashing, smashing–the once hearty hemlock heaves its now crippled form to the forest floor. What brings this mighty tree to its knees? Was it the axe man, his barrel chest booming with each thunderous blow? Was it the furious gusts of a gale going through the eastern hemlock stand, singing songs of sorrow?
NAY!!! The culprit creeps covertly along unsuspecting branches, before driving deep its dark feeder into the base of a hemlock needle: an invasive insect, a vile villain, the herald of misfortune for hemlocks all along the eastern lands. They drain the vigor from their victims not for vengeance, but for an unrelenting and unreasonable will to have all hemlocks bow before their kind. It’s the hemlock woolly adelgid! These white wool-wearing devils must have their advance stalled, so I study their ways…
