The Armyworms are Back on Tour
I’ve been in lawn care for 33 years. I’d love to tell you I started when I was five as some kind of lawn care prodigy… but nope. I was 23, green as the grass I was trying to grow, and far from prodigy status.
Over the years I’ve seen some weird things. I’ve nearly stepped on an eight-foot black snake. I’ve run over a yellow jacket nest and been stung 17+ times — they flew up my pant legs and I literally had to drop my pants to get the black-and-yellow assassins off me. I was treating lawns the morning the World Trade Center was attacked.
But the weirdest lawn issue I’ve ever seen? The Armyworm Invasion of 1997.
Back then we didn’t have ride-on spreaders, iPhones, or even iPods. I got my first cell phone that year — a Motorola flip phone the size of a brick — and still kept my pager because cell service was sketchy and minutes were limited. Bill Clinton was in office, and we hadn’t yet heard the name Monica Lewinsky.
In August ’97, lawns started dying and the phone rang off the hook. Armyworms were literally destroying lawns overnight. We’d treat with insecticide, and by the time we wrote a note for the customer (no email back then) the driveway would be covered with worms trying to escape the treated grass. It was like a horror movie — The Attack of the Killer Worms.
After that summer, I didn’t see another armyworm until… 2021. That’s 22 years without a single lepidoptera invasion. But now? We’ve had them 3 of the last 4 years, and they’re back again for 2025.
Apparently it’s the “Reunion Tour – They Do More in 24 Hours Than Most Worms Do in a Month” Tour – the one no one asked for. They march across lawns like an actual army, chewing through grass and destroying months of hard work in a single day.
If you’re seeing brown spots that aren’t from heat or lack of water, call us i
mmediately. Don’t let your lawn become the salad bar at a Golden Corral on a Sunday.
Keep a close eye on your yard in late Summer -especially in August — because, the troops are on the move again. Learn more about Armyworms Here!
