You have my sympathies on the bagworms – and my thanks for the reminder that things could be worse. We may be dying of sog but at least we don’t have THOSE!

I’m afraid I don’t know just how they enlarge the sacks – or too much else about them. What I do know is that there aren’t many effective controls. Having a lot of birds seems like about the best (although easier said than done).

Removing the bags comes next (also easier etc., as you point out). Bt works well if you spray when the larvae have recently hatched and are still small, active and vulnerable — usually in May or early June. By the time they’re big enough to give you the wobbles they’re also too big to kill easily, even with strong chemical poisons.

Mature trees can usually survive one season of defoliation, so your neighbor’s best bet is to spray Bt now, pick off bags whenever possible, and then spray next spring a few times, at 2 or 3 week intervals.

Bagworms don’t travel as much as some scourges we could name (once ensconced, the females never leave the bags; only the males fly) but they do crawl from plant to plant. And they can extrude silk and sail on the wind for quite a distance.

I mention this because the very best control is to keep a close eye on your trees so you can remove the bags before infestation becomes severe. It’s likely the worms on your neighbor’s juniper were there for a couple of years, building unnoticed until reaching their present evil splendor.

As for the kudzu and bamboo, I’d encourage you to move north, but everything else is, too, so it wouldn’t help for long.

It’s still raining here btw, now something like 19 out of the past 21 days, with rainfall 3 inches above normal.

My new question for you is about Juniper Bag Worms – what a fiendishly evil creature with that disguise. My neighbors big low (5ft x 7ft) spreading juniper is covered with thousands of little “cones”. To see them slightly moving and hear the chomping is like visiting aliens. There are far too many to hand pick – any advice? An oil that will render the leaves in edible and starve them? Burn the whole thing? – although I worry I would be able to hear the screaming from my house.

Also – how!! do they enlarge that sack from the inside will clinging with their mouths to the branch!!!

I brought a handful home to dispose of and while they pretty much stopped wiggling while I was holding them my hand felt like it it was holding beating heart. I might have nightmares. Well that and the kudzu. But it does keep the Bamboo in check, sort of.