Alice Burbank looked up at the trunk of one of the 100-foot oaks in her yard to the procession of furry caterpillars climbing toward the crown.

“I like nature, but not this kind,” she said Tuesday, as she stood in the driveway of her home on Craig Road in Old Lyme.

About two weeks ago, Burbank said, she began noticing the gypsy moths on her trees, and since then she and her daughter, Alison Letourneau, have cleaned the driveway repeatedly of leaf shards and feces left by the voracious insects.

They've applied insecticide sprays and wrapped the trunks with duct tape spread with Vaseline to get rid of them.

On Tuesday, Letourneau spread bands of roofing cement on the trunks, hoping the caterpillars will get stuck as they try to ascend. 

“You come out here in the still of the night and you can hear them crunching,” said Letourneau. “It’s eerie.”

Burbank’s home is one of many areas around the state infested with gypsy moths this spring, according to the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.

The gypsy moths, along with infestations of winter moths and a surge in nymphal black-legged ticks that carry Lyme disease and other infections, are taking some of the shine off of enjoyment of the outdoors in late spring and early summer.

“We’re at peak season for Lyme disease risk,” said Kirby Stafford, state entomologist.

This is the time of the year when the pinhead-sized nymphal ticks are active and most likely to bite people, potentially passing along the agents that cause Lyme disease, babesiosis and anaplasmosis.

Last week, the experiment station announced that 34 percent of nearly 1,000 ticks from across the state tested thus far this year carry the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, a 7 percent increase from the average from 2010 to 2014.

The testing also found that 12 percent of ticks are infected with the bacterium that causes anaplasmois, and 3.6 percent carry the parasite that causes babesiosis.

Now through mid-July while nymphs are active, Stafford said, people should be especially diligent about taking steps to prevent tick bites and checking themselves when they come in from outdoors.

“About 70 percent of cases of Lyme disease are associated with the nymphal stage in the early summer,” he said.

This year, he said, because the heavy snows last winter provided the moist blanket that favors tick survival, nymph populations appear especially high.

About 80 percent of bites that cause infections, he said, occur at home while playing in the yard, gardening and doing yardwork. To reduce risk, he recommended getting rid of piles of leaf litter and debris that harbor ticks, and opening up areas to sunlight as much as possible.

While people can take steps to reduce tick populations around their homes, nature may already be taking care of gypsy moth infestation itself. Victoria Smith, deputy state entomologist, said the fungus Entomophaga maimaiga has started to emerge after last weekend’s rains and is killing off the caterpillars.

“Normally the fungus keeps them in check earlier in the spring,” she said, “but we had a dry spring.”

Christopher Martin, director of forestry for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said the gypsy moths are attacking pockets of oak ridges around the state.

“We’re all crossing our fingers that the fungus will bring on the mortality we normally see,” he said. Most trees should be able to survive, he added.

A return of the heavy infestation and widespread defoliation that occurred in the early 1980s isn’t expected, the experiment station said in a news release.

Martin said he’s more concerned about the potential damage that could be caused by winter moth caterpillars. The tiny lime green caterpillars, a European native that first appeared in Nova Scotia in the 1950s, was first found defoliating trees in Groton in 2014.

This summer, they’ve spread into several other southeastern Connecticut communities.

“They’re doing a lot of damage from Stonington to Rocky Neck State Park (in East Lyme),” Smith said. “There’s not a whole lot you can do about it.”

Martin said winter moth caterpillars have been defoliating areas of Rhode Island.

“We’re watching it very closely,” he said. “So far, there are pockets of defoliation in southeastern Connecticut, but it’s not widespread.”

At Fleming’s Feed & Hardware in Stonington, customers have been coming in for the past month or so asking what to do about caterpillar infestations on their trees, said Ambry Fleming, store manager.

She points them to an insecticide spray formulated to kill gypsy moths and other caterpillars.

“They’re afraid their trees will die if they don’t get it controlled right away,” she said.

j.benson@theday.com

Twitter: @BensonJudy