About the time the leaf destroying worms come on, the fish in my pond are pretty hungry, so I pick off a handful of worms and feed the fish. They really love the fresh meat! Jostaberry, and Swiss Blackcurrant have zero worm damage, but the gooseberries pretty much all get hit. I wonder if little bantam chickens would eat the worms and leave the berries alone. Anyone have ideas about that?

Several years back, I received a potted rose that already had a few of these buggers on the foliage and now I battle with them every year in my garden ... I think that once they get into your environment you have them for good :(

Fingers crossed that your unique solution continues to work. If you need any assistance in eating enough crab to yield the required quantity of shells, just let us know. My husband wouldn't be too keen on a hosta viewing trip, but crab eating - now there is something that could make him plan a road trip!! lol Jan

There are a couple of things that you can use to distinguish most sawfly larvae from caterpillars (with the exception of the slug sawflies and some of the stem borers). Look on the underside. There are three jointed legs on the segments following the head (on the thorax). After these, on the abdomen you'll see fleshy things that look like legs (called prolegs) and serve the same function. If there are 6 or more pairs or these things (including the one at the back end) then it's a sawfly larva. Sawfly larvae also do not have velcro-like grippers at the ends of these pro-legs. Caterpillars do but they're not always easy to spot, even with a good hand lens. A good link that shows a side view of a CATERPILLAR (identifying true legs, prolegs, etc.) is below. Hope this helps. Regards, Colin Here is a link that might be useful: Caterpillars