A Sad Day for Mr. Cheddar

On Tuesday, Mr. Cheddar expressed concern over the state of his zucchini plants, worried that they looked like they were dying.

Yesterday, he went outside to find that they were, in fact, irreparably damaged.

Much as he hated me running inside to grab my camera for this sad process, I felt it should be documented for posterity. 

At least Lucy was there by his side... on the other side of the fence... for the process.

They appeared to have just died from the inside out. A few days ago, they were fine, and then all four of them took a sudden turn.

When he was pulling out the third plant, he discovered the root of the problem.

That, in the very center of the picture, is a "squash vine borer." Doing research on these things is downright nauseating. They do their damage by boring into the stems or vines of squashes/gourds and eating it from the inside out. It gets worse. They're apparently like mutant squash-loving butterflies, only disgusting. So they do all this damage in slimy-white-caterpillar form and then when they become adults, they become the ugliest moths you've ever seen. They're SO ugly that they're often mistaken as either wasps or giant flies. And these giant wasp mutant fly moths are the ones who perpetuate the whole cycle.

There are so many pictures all over the internet of these things living inside the stems, but I won't be linking them here because they make my stomach turn. Luckily Mr. Cheddar did not treat me to that horrifying sight on his poor dearly departed zucchini plants, but if you really want to see them, just do some Googling. 

He took such pride in these babies--even treated them to a milk bath when they were covered in mildew from the excessive rainfall we had here--and was so proud when they produced fruit faster than my dad's plants did.

Luckily we got two very sizable zucchini from the plants before they took their turn.

So I think we should all take a moment of silence, as a sign of respect.