My neighbor’s lawn is all tore-up to beat hell. She said the crows did it.

We do have a lot of crows.

But I could hardly believe they were in the landscaping business. Clearly, if they’re poking their pointy bits into the ground at a rate to destroy an entire lawn, there’s something yummy in that turf. At least it would be yummy to a crow, although certain human populations in the world might like it too. Not around here, so much. I’m not judging, but in our local farmer’s market, the food isn’t jumping around.

And once I noticed that bit of soil upheaval, I started seeing it all over. Dozens of people in the immediate vicinity have had their lawns almost entirely perforated by crows. I really don’t remember having witnessed this before this year.

I hate the whole AI thing but it has no trouble at all with searches like “What is crapping out lawns in the Pacific Northwest.” Thanks for asking, our new overlords piped up. It’s the European Chafer Beetle.

Sure enough, the European Chafer Beetle is an immigrant, albeit not undocumented—it first emerged in America in New York in the 1940s, just like Donald Trump. Still, we can blame a bunch of stuff on those immigrants and no reason not to. They didn’t show up in our area here until 2015, and have been proliferating ever since. I only just noticed all the damage they cause.

All kinds of shit started happening around 2015.

So what they do is lay eggs in the ground, and the larvae eat the roots of turf grass. Their entire life cycle spans only one year, and the culmination, the adult Chafer Beetle, lives only a week or two. During that time, of course, they pop out from their basement lairs and try like hell to procreate in their limited window of opportunity. They come up out of the soil at late dusk and party through the night, or just grab beetle pussy if they can get away with it, and then the appropriate half of them lay eggs in the soil. It is said that “exhausted” beetles are sometimes found near porch lights. There’s always that inebriated group, right? But that’s good—that’s where you can find good candidates for the Supreme Court or the Department of Defense.

This particular beetle is related to the common cockchafer, which has similar destructive tendencies. The big fat white larvae of the chafer beetle will, by themselves, destroy your lawn patch by patch. You can’t trust invading immigrants. Ask the Cherokee.

Which means the crows are actually helping, because it’s those yummy larvae they’re gobbling up. Unfortunately, your average homeowner can see only that the crows are tearing up their lawn, simply out of dickishness, and not notice the real problem lurking underground.

So think of those crows, all dressed up in black, as Antifa. You might not like how they’re messing things up for you. They might really piss you off.

But they wouldn’t be there at all if it weren’t for all the cockchafers.