This Zombie Plant-Like Thing Is The Weirdest Thing I've Seen Today

WTF is this? This plant, or fungus, (or insect) seems to have a mind of its own. Biker Craig Werner was on the trail when he spotted this strange looking thing covered in white "fungus". He writes:

While I was out doing trail maintenance on a local mountain bike trail I came across this weird leaf that was bluish white and had a phosphoric glow to it. I took a closer look at it and assume that it was covered in a fungus. The strange thing was that the fungus was moving. I guess that they might also be a larva or some kind of pupa but I really have no idea what these are but it looks really freaky.I guess it could be the start of the zombie apocalypse. If anyone out there knows what it is let me know.

After a quick research, we pretty sure know what this is. It appears to be a "Dancing woolly" or a type of aphid -- a small insect in the order Hemiptera that feeds on the sap of American beech trees. Here's what Scientific American says about it:

Commonly known as woolly aphids, these fuzzy little guys are distinguished by the long, white, waxy filaments that cover their posteriors. Not to be confused with the woolly aphids from the Eriosomatinae family, which terrorise apple trees under an expansive blanket of white fluff, these are beech blight aphids (Grylloprociphilus imbricator), a species that lives off the sap of beech trees in North America.

A population of beech blight aphids will settle onto a beech tree, amassing by the thousands across its branches like freshly fallen snow. Here they’ll pierce the bark with their syringe-like mouthparts called stylets and suck the sap out. Their calling card is a dark, ugly build-up around the tree caused by sooty mold fungi (Ascomycete), which turn aphid excretions called honeydew black while extracting the nutrients. Despite the worrying appearance of this thick, black tar, these aphids are not considered a serious threat to their beech tree hosts – at the very worst they might distort or slightly stunt the growth of the leaves or kill off a small branch.