The pictured alien, armed with spore-bearing horns, was spotted May 28th on the flanks of the Livingstone Range.
Clearly, it's from another world. The targeted Rocky Mountain juniper, also pictured, is putty in the alien's hands.
Their spore-powered spaceship landed two days ago on a wet spring night and, by dawn, the Jello-like aliens had taken command. Orange and gelatinous, they were everywhere.
I spotted them, eye-opening and otherworldly, as darkness gave way to soft light.
The invasive little pathogens (Gymnosporangium juniper-virginianae), clearly from another world, look like a cross between Sputnik and a jellyfish—or maybe it's a mucilaginous starfish? Who knows?
These slimy, viscous and diminutive extraterrestrials invade the Earth within hours of the first suitable spring rain and, overnight, transform into lethal dwarfs with spore-bearing horns.
Apple trees and junipers hate the invaders with a burning passion, and for good reason. The aliens leapfrog through the landscape targeting these trees and shrubs as unwilling hosts, disfiguring leaves, forming galls, sometimes causing death.
Agrologists and horticulturalists refer to the aliens as a rust fungus, but apple trees and junipers, not known for being clinical or polite, don't define the "little orange men," they just want 'em wiped off the face of the Earth.
But ... David! What to do? I don't have a Trekkian ray-gun! How can we defend vegetation without blasting off a chemical bomb? What do you suggest?
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