We were talking to a gardening friend the other day about (surprise, surprise) gardening, and she asked Cindy what she should do to help the Walking Sticks she found in her garden. She was carefully moving them onto her citrus trees in the hopes that they would be a beneficial insect that would control other, more harmful insects.
They are interesting looking insects that are hard to spot because they look just like the twigs and stems of the plants they inhabit. They are so well camouflaged that I've never actually seen one and don't have any pictures of them.
So she was shocked when Cindy's response was, "kill them all immediately."
Turns out the Indian Walking Sticks that infest Southern California aren't native species and aren't beneficials at all, because they don't eat other bugs, but an infestation of them can devour quite a lot of foliage, stripping leaves down to the stems.
See National Geographic for a great photo of one and IPM Online for more information about them and how to control them.
So our gardener friend decided to feed them to her chickens instead. Good call.
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