Epitaph for a Peach by David M. Masumoto Page A

first warmth of spring and immediately seeks virgin green leaves. It begins feeding, munching on tender foliage and fattening its dirty-white body. Within days it will bore into a delicate green shoot, mining the fiber, carving a home out of the tissue, hiding from predators, gnawing and growing.
    I’ve never seen the hatching of a peach twig borer. They’re as tiny as a sliver and emerge in the tops of the peach trees. But I see signs of their work: tips of shoots dry out from their dining, tendrils turn brown and wither, hanging lifeless, dangling in the spring breeze. If I’m lucky, the worm is still inside, but most often the dead shoot is seen only after the creature has left to pupate elsewhere. In a few weeks it will emerge as an adult moth, laying eggs for the next invasion.
    The aroma of a ripening peach lures caterpillars to its juicy nectar. They creep to the hanging fruit and gorge themselves, their bodies grow fat and change color, their bulbous flesh transmutes into brown and white rings. They feed on the surface, nibbling on the skin before gouging hunks out of the meat. They leave a crater where rot and mold find shelter. Some fruit will begin to bleed, juice oozing from the surface and dripping on leaves and other maturing fruit below. A stream of decay spreads from the wound.
    The assault begins when a first generation of peach twig borers appears in early spring. By June a second generation is born, followed by another generation and then another. With the summer heat and long days, they multiply in shorter intervals, discovering a wonderful abundance of green shoots for homes, boring into the twigs and munching on fresh peaches during their summer picnics.
    A few summers ago I discovered a peach twig borer invasion at harvesttime. My first bags of fruit were picked and dumped into large wooden harvest bins three feet deep. I reached in to taste my first juicy peach of the early morning and the fruit gushed in my hand. It can’t be overripe yet, I thought. Then I turned it over and shuddered. The back side had been gouged, the peach violated; rot festered in the wounds. I picked up another and another, only to discover pockmarks strewn across the pink and red flesh.
    I immediately inspected another bin, praying the infestation was isolated to one tree. The second bin was better, only about 10 percent of the fruit was damaged. Frantically I began tossing out the fruit, leaning into the bin, shoveling out dregs, purging the diseased. I panicked, wanting to destroy the evidence, to cleanse my fields.
    I was in denial, and with justification. Should marketers learn of my affliction, they would scrutinize all my fruit, searching for more damage. I imagined my name blacklisted on brokers’ desks, a thick red WORMS stamped across invoices.
    But it was hopeless. I had a cancer. The fruit packers would cull heavily and produce brokers would be wary. I would help no one by trying to sneak a few extra fruits past inspection, only to learn that in a distant city someone bit into my peach and discovered the proverbial worm poking its head out of the fruit. The only worse nightmare would be if they found half a worm, and I’d have to claim that the peach twig borer is a surface feeder, so it couldn’t be my worm. But that would not alter the hysteria. I still had worms.
    Most worms usually are taken care of by spraying. Many farmers use a chemical in the winter that provides control for months, a worm toxin that destroys eggs and caterpillars during the cold temperatures. The spray also kills most everything else in the field. By early spring those orchards are sterile of life; lady beetles and lacewings avoid the area, repulsed by a natural quarantine of residues and the fact that there is no food for their hungry appetites.
    Some of these chemicals are now prohibited. One university study revealed that, in damp moist conditions, droplets from a winter spray can travel great distances.