The Douglas-fir tussock moth (Orgyia pseudotsugata) caterpillar is small in size, with brightly colored tufts of black hair projecting from the head and rear of its body. However diminutive and decorative, this caterpillar’s fierce appetite—especially during outbreaks in the late spring and early summer—can quickly defoliate individual trees and collectively damage large swaths of that arboreal species whose name it bears. Its capacity to chew through forests gained notoriety in the 1960s and 1970s, so much so that in 1965 the U. S. Forest Service sprayed DDT mixed with fuel oil over 66,000 infected acres in the Pacific