Throughout this past winter, I risked broken bones climbing high in the naked branches of my three mature oak trees, scraping little ­camelhair patches of insect eggs into an empty peanut butter jar.

It was the beginning of a multiphased battle — and a growing obsession — against the gypsy moth caterpillar, which in 2015 had stripped my oaks bare to their stems, like a martini drinker sucking olives off a cocktail toothpick.

When I wasn’t scraping, I used a spray bottle filled with water and soybean oil, which, according to what I read on the intertubes, prevents caterpillar eggs from hatching. I soaked the egg sacs I couldn’t physically reach, and those so high up that I didn’t dare to. It seemed I had removed or treated 90 percent of the egg sacs I could see from the ground.

Gaaa! So where did all these caterpillars come from?

They seemed to all hatch the same day this spring. My oaks were instantly infested. Soon my driveway was covered with leaf shard confetti, as if they had thrown themselves a parade. Not only are they destructive, they’re wasteful. If you’re going to eat it, why not eat the whole leaf? There are starving caterpillars in evergreen neighborhoods who get no oak at all.

I bought poison at the hardware store — randomly picking one with a silhouette of a caterpillar on the label, among the many six-leggers it promised to kill.

From the top of an eight-foot stepladder, I sprayed as high into the trees as I could.

The next day the driveway was strewn with fuzzy corpses — but also a new layer of leaf bits.

I wrapped the tree trunks with duct tape smeared with Vaseline to stop new caterpillars from climbing up from the ground.

And I sprayed so frequently that I soon needed a second bottle. I tried a different brand, only to notice later it was just a combination of plant oils. Kid and pet safe, it said. It didn’t seem to kill a single one. I’d have done better hitting them with the bottle.

Back to the store for a spray with unpronounceable chemicals and a warning label. Some of the poison got in my eye when I was using it. It kind of burned.

Right on, I thought, this is the good stuff.

Soon, we settled into a routine.

I’d come home to find dozens of caterpillars stuck in traffic jams at the Vaseline barrier. I’d spray them and the branches I could reach. The next day there would be just as many. Do they rise from the dead?

Most of the caterpillars seem dormant now, soon to transform into annoying moths that fly inside the house whenever the door opens. At least the flappy moths that come inside have some productive use. As cat toys.

Meanwhile, my oaks have hideous Friar Tuck haircuts: bald on top with homely rings of battered leaves on the lower branches.

I’d have to give this round to the caterpillars.

Mark Arsenault can be reached at mark.arsenault@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @bostonglobemark