I can’t believe it’s February; there’s snow and sleet outside; record low temperatures – and I still have living stinkbugs in my house. As I write this, there is one flying round and round the light fixture, banging noisily into the glass globe.
Stinkbugs – oh, how we hate them.
My garage door opener failed last week, immediately after my husband left town on business, and I had to send an SOS to my brother-in-law Larry and my nephew Stevie. Turns out, a stinkbug got into the device, died in front of the sensor that let the opener know when it had finished its job, causing the motor to spin until it stripped one of the gears into … well, white plastic dust.
At least one of these blasted things appears in the house every day, so obviously they are living in the walls. They crawl out of the light fixtures and the baseboards.
Crush them or vacuum them up – and you’ll learn why they’re called stinkbugs. Over the summer, I swear an entire swarm of them must have sautéed themselves on the motor of my car, leaving me to drive around with their pleasant (ugh) aroma for days. In the winter – and one at a time – they’re less stinky, but no less annoying.
Having hitchhiked their way here from Asia, stinkbugs have no natural predators in America. I’ve read that bats eat them, but I’ve seen no evidence of that. In fact, we normally have a number of bats living around the house (we usually see them at night in the summer when we use the hot tub), but this past summer I didn’t see a single one. As far as I can tell the stinkbugs may have eaten the bats …
I thought they were bad last summer, but if I’m still having a problem with them in FEBRUARY, I shudder to think what they’ll be like next summer.
Think locusts. Think biblical. Think stink.
I just saw one in my house too. Ugh! Hope you are staying warm.
i was invaded with this pests this past fall, though i still see one every once in a while. i thought i heard somewhere that they were released to get rid of the ladybug population…
Even in biblical times they didn’t have to deal with the twin plagues of snow days and stink bugs!
Supposedly the stink bugs migrate indoors during the colder months and then return outdoors when things warm up. So they’re like retired people, I guess, except invading our houses is their version of spending the winter in Florida.
We’ve been plagued with the stinky critters this year, too. Ugh. I hate them! As for summer…well, maybe when the weather is warmer they won’t try so hard to get into the house. That’s my hope, anyway.
We’ve still got a few, but it doesn’t sound as bad as you have it. Whenever we see one, we grab it with a tissue and flush it down the toilet. No stink.
ick! bugs!
That cannot be natural. How do they survive the winter, other than living in the warm, insulated walls of your home? That sounds horrible. Maybe you should get a cat? Or a bird? Or a Monkey? There has to be something in Asia that eats this scourge upon humanity!
hi miss dianne! well i just gotta say that post stinks. ha ha. yikes! i didnt ever hear of a stink bug. its not so pretty for sure. what do they eat that could make them so stinky? maybe you could need to put perfume in what they eat so they could smell lots better when you squash them.
…hugs from lenny
ps youre birthdays just real close! 🙂
Well, you didn’t actually expect them to stay outside in the freezing cold, did you? 😉
Snow AND stinkbugs — what a combination! You have my sympathy 😛
Too bad they don’t make little stink bug motels to capture them in, like they do roach motels.