PORT LUDLOW — Bill and Margaret McLaughlin looked on from their car window Tuesday as state biologists sprayed insecticides around their neighborhood to kill invasive gypsy moths.
The McLaughlins are more than happy to let the Department of Agriculture crews spray down trees in their back yard and plants in their flower beds — they know first-hand what gypsy moths have done in the upper Midwest and New England.
“We’ve already gone through this once before in Virginia,” Mrs. McLaughlin said.
“And it worked then — nobody was affected by the spray.”
Virginia is one of 19 states in which European gypsy moths have a permanent foothold.
Tuesday’s spraying in Port Ludlow was to keep the Olympic Peninsula from being counted among infested areas.
The populations started at a house in Massachusetts in the late 1800s and now spread from Wisconsin to Maine and south to North Carolina.
It is routine to have entire forests of deciduous trees stripped of their leaves, Agriculture spokesman John Lundberg said Tuesday.