One day, after coming home from work, I was cleaning some garbage from the car. I opened up the garage door to put it in the bin when I noticed something between a few cardboard boxes. It took a few seconds to focus on it, then I noticed that the sort of irregular black mass was in fact moving. I was more then a bit unnerved at this small heap of dark coloured worms in my garage. I moved a couple of boxes and I could see that they were not quite worms. They were dark green, long(about 7-9cm, 2-3″). They had six strong legs near the front and when disturbed, had a yellowish coloured goo form around their mouths. Once they started curling their back ends up over their heads, I had a strong feeling they were … bad. I had my wife boil some water and I scooped them up with a shovel. I poured boiling water over the lot which then smelled a lot like eucalypt oil.
Turns out they eat eucalypt, with a vengeance. “Spitfire” is the nickname given to the sawfly larva. I can never recall seeing a sawfly at this point, but apparently their larva are around in large numbers. They can defoliate entire trees, so they are considered a pest. The larva feed on eucalypt trees for their entire lives (which makes them bad tasting for birds as well) and when old enough, come down from the trees in large groups and burrow into the ground to move into the next stage of development.
I started asking guys at work about them and what to do. Apparently, they get their name from the liquid they spit out of their mouths when disturbed. Rumor has it they can actually spit it some distance, but I’ve not seen anything to confirm it. Common belief is that they are poisonous to some extent as well. I’ve had people tell me that skin irritation or perhaps blindness could be a result of being spat at. A common problem, someone jokingly said to me that maybe 9 out of 10 bushfires are started from someone pouring gasoline(petrol here) on them and lighting it.
