Sebastian Schuchler

Yeah, they are.

They're particularly unpleasant and they are highly toxic.

And they're these tiny grey looking caterpillars that have hibernated themselves and infested all of these trees across the various green spaces across the German capital and across Germany more widely.

And the thing that

makes them so toxic are these 700,000 tiny micro hairs that are all over their bodies.

And if there is any gust of wind, a deluge of rain, they kind of fall onto people.

And anybody who's got exposed skin from wearing shorts or T-shirts, which we're obviously all wearing right now, it's so hot across all of Germany and only going to get hotter.

They end up falling on you and leaving you with these almost like chicken pock-like rashes all over your body.

And they are incredibly itchy.

And the thing that's really difficult to do is that there's almost no way to manage it.

It requires mitigation happening months before.

And once they're here, they're here to stay.

And there's almost nothing that the authorities can do about it.

Horrible.

And it's been like that since Sunday night.

I didn't actually immediately feel the pain of them.

It was only as I was going to bed on Sunday and my son was with me as well.

We were giving him a bath and I suddenly noticed all these rashes all over his legs and his back.

And then as I was getting into bed, my wife looked at my back and she was like, oh, my goodness, you are covered in these red spots.

And as I had a look at them over the last few days, they are literally everywhere.