I've decided that enough is enough and it's time to get rid of the tent caterpillars which have set up camp in the tree behind my house.

Dad's suggestion was that I burn them out. I'll admit that I've never seen a caterpillar which can survive being set on fire, but burning them out just wasn't practical suggestion since the tents are 20-25 feet off the ground and the longest pole I could only find was only 10 feet long. I think Dad just likes the idea of me accidentally burning my house down.

Over the weekend, I decided to try killing the caterpillars with bug killer. I picked up a bottle of liquid bug killer and a sprayer attachment for the hose. I've got pretty good water pressure here and figured it would be no trouble to spray even the ones in the top of the tree.

It turns out that the sprayer attachment sprays in sort of a fan shape. You get plenty of coverage that way, but really lousy distance. The bugs in the higher branches weren't in any sort of danger from that, but I decided to let the stuff sit on the tree overnight before trying anything else.

Monday, I decided that since, as I said, I've got really good water pressure, maybe I should just try blasting the bugs out of the tree with water from the hose.

I blasted those bugs but good. I figured it was a pretty safe bet that a lot of them had drowned if nothing else. Their nests were just big soggy messes. They were goners for certain.

When I got home from work on Tuesday, I spent a few minutes watching as my neighbors' son rode his bike back and forth in front of the houses, experiencing his first time ever riding without training wheels. Then I went around to the back yard to water the tomatos. On my way back into the house, I walked past the tree the caterpillars had been living in, and glanced up to see if the nests were gone. Not only were they still there, I think they were bigger than on Monday.

OK, time to try Dad's method. Even with the 10 foot pole I can't reach the upper branches, but at least I can get rid of the nests in the lower ones. I burned out two nests before my neighbor Tony saw what I was up to and suggested a better method -- he lent me his pressure washer!

Now in case you haven't seen one before, a pressure washer is the guy version of a water gun. Lots more power! Never mind Super Soakers, with the right nozzle, you can use a pressure washer to carve your name in solid rock. We had that sucker hooked up in less than 10 minutes and were all ready to start blasting caterpillars out of the tree.

Tony's a really friendly guy, always willing to help a neighbor. He tells me he's loaned out the pressure washer to various people a number of times. Apparently someone forgot to return one of the nozzles. The one he had was great for washing stuff (I spent the next 30 minutes cleaning my backyard deck), but it definitely wasn't the caterpillar blaster. About all we succeeded in doing was washing the caterpillars. After two days of having water shot at them, I've probably got the cleanest caterpillars for miles around.

Tony told me that tomorrow's he's going to bring a 30-foot pole home from work so I can burn the caterpillar nests. I think he's in league with Dad.