Worcester the heart of Massachusetts has fallen victim to an infestation of the Asian Longhorn Beetle. It seems that this critter made its way into the US as a stow away in wooden packaging materials. It lives and breeds inside of certain types of trees and wood products.
We began to catch wind of this in the Burncoat area of Worcester about a year ago when we received a flyer detailing that certain areas of the city were infested. Those areas were then instructed to follow strict disposal of tree limbs and debris from trees in infested areas. Rather quickly, a pretty large area of Worcester and some surrounding suburbs had been quarantined, meaning no debris from the tress in the area bigger than one square inch could leave the quarantined area and had to be handled by certified tree removal teams.
We did not hear anything with regards to this problem for quite some time, until one Saturday morning, where a suspicious character was getting suited up in “climbing” gear (harness the whole works) and was climbing the trees in our front yards. I found this rather odd, as this doesn’t happen every day. (If it does in your area, I would love to hear about it! 
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After asking the man the simple question of what on earth he was doing, he informed me that he worked for the USDA and was inspecting trees for infestation.
Sure enough our area became infested and as you can see from the picture I posted above, all of the trees in our area will be removed. They started in our end of the street early this morning, and to be honest made quick work of cutting them down.
The unfortunate part of all this is I believe it will take away a large part of the character and appeal this particular neighborhood had. The Burncoat area has always been a very scenic neighborhood with older style homes and the large trees. According to the city, eventual a “reforrestation” process will be worked in and trees less susceptible to the beetle infestation will be re-introduced.
I surely hope the city follows through with this to restore a large part of the scenery around these parts.
If you are interested in finding out more about this, you can read about it here from the Worcester city home page on the infestation.
If you are reading this and from around an area that is also affected by this, feel free to drop a comment on this post!
