I don't remember the year.  It had to be sometime in the mid to late 60s.  As I've mentioned many times before I grew up in a house on a dead end street in the woods.  One year the Gypsy Moths attacked.  I have never seen anything like it before or since.  Their caterpillars were everywhere... billions of them.  When you walked through the woods it sounded like it was raining from the caterpillar droppings falling from the trees.   
    In a matter of weeks they stripped every leaf from every deciduous tree and bush.  It was mid Summer and there was no shade whatsoever.  The trees were completely bare.  It looked just like Winter.  In earlier times something like that would have caused a famine. 
     Then they moved on.  They haven't been back in such numbers since, thankfully.  I hope to never see that again.