suck dry

Barely visible to the naked eye, these tiny pests pierce and then suck dry plant cells.

In a scenario out of a horror movie, the young insects crawl onto the animal's shell and inject a paralysing toxin that slowly turns the snail's insides into soup, which they then suck dry.

They point to problems elsewhere, including California where water theft by illegal marijuana growers has helped to suck dry local aquifers, leaving legitimate users without water.

“It is not. CRT is a parasitic ideology that will suck dry good-hearted efforts to solve the problems we have in America and put them into racial division instead.”

From these emerge her children — strange, bristled larvae called aphis lions, which live by preying on aphids, scales, or mites, which they capture and suck dry of fluid.