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British actress Ella Purnell has been working since she was a kid, and in the last few years she’s been really booked and busy. I feel like she’s one mega hit away from entering a whole new level of fame. (I also feel like there must be casting directors just waiting for the opportunity to cast Ella as Emma Stone’s sister, but that’s another story.) It seems Ella had some downtime amid her very healthy career momentum, as she recently took to Instagram to share videos of work she was doing on her home. Renovations? No. Instead, Ella was chronicling the spiny elm caterpillar infestation that befell her elm tree-adjacent abode, along with the (gentle) efforts she was undertaking to remove the unwanted guests from her premises, so they could be on their merry way to becoming mourning cloak butterflies… elsewhere.
Ella shared that her yard was infested with caterpillars and documented the entire experience, and I can feel them crawling on my skin.
…In her Instagram stories, she teased the ordeal, writing, “I don’t think any of yall will be able to guess what I spent my day doing today.”
After showing a salad bowl and some tongs, it became clear that she wasn’t making a salad when she videoed black caterpillars crawling on the outside wall of her house, in the flowerbed, on her fence, and everywhere.
She collected as many as she could in the salad bowl to relocate and then provided an update on the soon-to-be butterflies the next day.
Ella learned that the caterpillars eat the leaves of elm trees, revealing that she has a large elm tree in her yard. “So, it turns out the spiny elm caterpillars love elm trees. Who would’ve thunk it?” she joked.
Sure enough, the caterpillars were crawling all over the tree’s bark, but how and why they went over to the house is a mystery I’m not sure I want to solve.
What most likely is a response to people flooding her DMs with unsolicited factoids, Ella addressed that she is “not killing the caterpillars, and “they are not poisonous as in they could kill you, but their spikes are stingers and hurt like ass,” based on her experience with them.
She added, “They make really pretty butterflies. I wanted my garden to be a peaceful spring time oasis but instead I have hundreds of stinging caterpillars falling from the sky.”
According to this North Carolina State University entomology factsheet, a spiny elm caterpillar can grow to two inches long and transform into the mourning cloak butterfly after being a chrysalis for three weeks.
Ella handled the whole scene with pretty darn good humor, if you ask me! Redditors put all her Instagram Stories together and she seems super chill for a home invasion. (Then again, these weren’t squirrels. IYKYK.) Who knows, though, maybe she hired a professional caterpillar relocator to round up the critters.
In the house I grew up in, there was a small pantry off the kitchen that my mother used as an office. The room had no door, and the kitchen didn’t have one either. After feeling like she’d heard faint, strange sounds in there for months, the day came when my mother noticed a bee in the room. And then another one. And on and on and on. Yellow jackets had chewed through the wall of the house and set up a nest!!! And, I repeat: in a room with no doors! I promptly made arrangements to stay with a friend until our home was certified as yellow jacket-free. When the specialist came, he told my parents I was the smartest one in the family. Granted, caterpillars aren’t as aggressive as yellow jackets (except for whichever kind went after Jamie Dornan). So I guess the lesson is, make sure you cater your removal efforts to the risk level associated with the intruder. And record the whole thing on social media, naturally.
Ella Purnell documents a poisonous caterpillar infestation pic.twitter.com/KojB9xQjTq
— lindy (@manifestAang) March 16, 2025
Photos credit: Laurent V /Avalon, Olivier Huitel/Avalon, Norbert Scanella/Panoramic/Avalon, Getty
Oh! So that’s what those caterpillars I had last year were! No wonder my elms didn’t look great last summer.
I’m currently dealing with ground squirrels that have taken over my yard. My house is surrounded! I’ve called in experts. It’s like “Tremors” (or “Dune” if looking for current reference). (“Caddyshack” if going for the humor) Really invasive – I’m not going with no-kill solution and I’m not ashamed! Those bastards are relentless.
Emma Stone’s sister? Maybe. Emmy Rossum’s? Definitely.
Or Nicole Ritchie’s, in the black dress photo.
Squirrels are the worst … i had some that got into the ceiling of the porch off my kitchen. Nothing kept them out, no amount of blocking the holes in, chicken wire, trapping, deterrents… I’d think they were gone and then I could hear them gnawing and scrambling and thumping around again.
The worst is I could hear them when I was in bed, because my bedroom is directly above the kitchen. 3 am they’d be active and I’d be laying there terrified they were gnawing their way into the main house.
The only thing that got them gone was just taking that porch ceiling down, exposing the rafters … no place for them to go, just open air. I did warn the crew working on it that there’d been squirrels.
Better spiny elm caterpillars than … Yellowjackets. 😎
I do sympathize, my building has had mice and roaches off and on over the years. Best wishes for Ella’s house!
Infestations are awful, call around for professionals at the first signs. There are people who really know what they’re doing and they can save your sanity.
We have falling/stinging catapillars in New Orleans.
They SUCK, and should be coming to visit us shortly.
Mostly, your dog steps on one and their paw hurts for a day.
But years ago i was walking with my boyfriend around our neighborhood, put my head on his shoulder, and got a serious sting on my cheek which hurt for a full 24 hours.
Unpleasant.
Love that i’m still getting ghost Jackie on season 3 of Yellowjackets. In the freezer, naturally.
“Make sure you cater your removal efforts to the risk level associated with the intruder” – If everyone had that additude we’d have a much healthier ecosystem and the Nextdoor app would be way less annoying. “This small harmless spider takes over my yard for 2 weeks a year and then goes away on it’s own. What toxic chemical do you suggest I douse my home with for this issue that self resolves?”