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bob_cville

Sick to death of stinkbugs

bob_cville
10 years ago

Over the last couple of years in this area (and in much of the mid-atlantic region) we have been inundated with stinkbugs. I believe they are native to China and were accidentally "introduced" to the area three or four years ago, and they really seem to love it here.

They don't really "do" anything they just somehow get into the house and "hangout". Walking along a window, sitting motionless on the wall for days, just going wherever they please without fear, because nobody wants to squash them.

You have to watch where you are walking because they walk slowly across the floor, and it you step on one the room will stink. You have to look carefully when you set something on the kitchen counter, which because it is tropical brown granite is prefect camouflage for them. I've discovered them clinging to the bottom of the wire rack in the kitchen sink when I've drained pasta, when the boiling water hits them them fill them room with their stink. I've found one just hanging out on the handle of the refrigerator. I've had one crawl inside the smoke detector and set it off. And at one point my wife grabbed a raincoat from the hook inside the front door, put it on and discovered 50 or so of them hiding inside the coat.

Just yesterday I captured 45 of them here and there around the main floor of our house, and just an hour or so later still more were buzzing noisily across the room.

And outside, if you go to put on work gloves you have to check to make sure they haven't crawled down into the fingertips. If you open a folding chair or a box stored in the garage, you can expect to find dozens inside, and if you pull out a tarp, literally hundreds will be lurking inside it.

Last fall there was a large garden spider web just outside our front door and I would take particular glee in flinging a stink bug into the web and watching the spider wrap the bug up and suck it dry.

About the only place I never find them is inside the stink bug trap that I purchased. I really wish they would all just go away.

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