Name This Prehistoric-looking insect!

[sneakypete]

Here are three photos of this thing that I took with my cell phone a couple of days ago. Believe it or not,but it is inching it's way up a upright steel pole by apparently "sticking" to the pole somehow using what looks to be wooden twig legs. As you can see in the photos,it lives in a shell that looks EXACTLY like a piece of dead tree bark,and attaches itself to whatever it is climbing using the "bark legs". It then extends it's tiny pink body out of the shell and uses multiple rows of tiny little legs to extend the body an inch or so,and then "walks" the "tree bark" body up to the point where the entire pink body and head are invisible again. Then it repeats the process until it gets to where it is going. While it is doing this,you can see a tiny little jaw opening and closing as it seems to be trying to "taste" what it is climbing.

Best damn disguise I have ever seen. I have never seen or even heard of anything like this before,and am trying to find out what the hell this remarkable little insect is.

[Elderberry]

Is this it?

Bagworm Moth larva

[sneakypete]

Is this it?

Bagworm Moth larva

I believe it is. Hard to see without the inner body sticking out.

[Elderberry]

If its bagworms kill them all.

http://blog.davey.com/2018/04/bagworms-are-they-harmful-and-how-can-i-get-rid-of-them/

What damage do bagworms do?

Bagworms will attack more than 120 different types of trees. Though, they prefer evergreens, like juniper, arborvitae, cedar and spruce.

Once they’ve found a tree to call home, bagworms start munching.

On evergreens, they’ll eat lots of the buds and foliage, causing branch tips to turn brown and then die. But if they eat more than 80 percent of the tree, the entire evergreen may die.

On deciduous trees (those that lose their leaves in winter), bagworms chew small holes in the leaves and can cause defoliation. Generally, these trees will bounce back if you get rid of the bagworms.

Bagworms also wrap silk around the twigs they build their bags on, which could kill the tree twigs a few years from now.

[catfish1957]

If its bagworms kill them all.

Amen....    Many a Pecan crop gone to sh__ by these buggers.

[sneakypete]

If its bagworms kill them all.

 

@Elderberry

This one must have been a Special Education bagworm because he was doing his damnedest to bite holes in that steel beam. I did notice another one that was attached to another steel beam like the one attached to that wooden post in your photo that hadn't started to  hatch out yet. I'll look for it when I go back.

[sneakypete]

BTW,I had never seen one before yesterday. What parts of the country are they normally seen?

[Elderberry]

They’re actually native to North America. But they’re mainly in the Eastern United States, dispersed all along the East Coast and in much of the Southeast.

We had an evergreen tree totally infested with bagworms. My dad cut the tree down and burned the tree bagworms and all right on our driveway to make sure that none of them evil critters got away.