By Esther C. Baird
First published in the Chronicle Transcript Mar. 13, 2021
So it’s been a year since the world plunged into a pandemic. I know you may want to talk
about when you first bought a mask, or the last live event you went to, or that time you
stood in line at Costco for two hours to buy toilet paper. But I am not emotionally ready
yet to process an entire year of disruption. Instead, to commemorate this anniversary, I
thought I’d touch on that other annual milestone that we, at least in the more forested
parts of the North Shore, experience each year: the stink bug invasion.
Either you have them and you know precisely what I mean, or you don’t and many of us
don’t like you these days.
When we were moving the long two miles up the road from our one Boxford house to our
new Boxford house in the fall, we realized the stink bug problem was even worse in our
new neighborhood. It had something to do with, I think, the trees and their proximity to
the homes. Our realtor was easily spooked by them and shrieked or shuddered each time
we saw one…which was a lot. Our inspector calmly corrected her, “These are western
conifer seed bugs.” He pointed to their slimmer structure, “Actual stink bugs are wide and
flat looking, you can see these are longer.”
She couldn’t because she was yelling and waving her arms.
Over the winter their numbers abated, though we would still regularly capture and flush
(our preferred disposal method) two or three a day. But on any day when the temperature
went up so did their numbers. Now that it is spring, or almost spring, or approaching the time of year when we bandy about the concept of spring, it is a fact that the bugs will rise up and storm our homes for one last hurrah.
I, for one, am not in the mood.
Our local Nunan Florist and Greenhouses posted a photo of a Venus Fly Trap saying,
“Have a few stink bugs around? We have the solution!” Sure enough, at their store, beyond
the parrot and fabulous lush plants and warm greenhouse air that soothed my winter
scourged skin, they had a shelf of carnivorous plants with warnings about touching them,
oils, and poison.
Obviously, I needed one.
I bought one about the size of a child’s teacup since I wasn’t quite ready to go all “Little
Shop of Horrors.” On the other hand, our seed bugs are surprisingly large and if one
moseyed by my carnivorous plant it’s not entirely clear that the plant would win. Still I set
it in a sunny window where the bugs tend to show up and left it to devour and destroy.
Thankfully, just in case my plant wasn’t totally up to the challenge, I know a bug guy.
Dr. Joe Elkinton over at UMass Amherst helped me out with a column way back in 2007
when the winter moth was the pest du jour in our area. This time, he put me in touch with
his colleague Tawny Simisky who is an entomologist at the UMass extension program. She
was a wealth of information, plus she was helpful and friendly and didn’t laugh at me
when I said I bought a carnivorous plant as one of my deterrents. (Well, it was over email
so I can’t be totally sure on that point).
She confirmed we are primarily dealing with the western conifer seed bug (Leptoglossus
occidentalis) and less often (though often enough I’d say) the actual brown marmorated
stink bug (Halyomorpha halys). She explained, “The adults of these species will enter the
home, usually in the fall, to find a warm sheltered location to overwinter.”
Well that’s a relief! They are only coming to overwinter. This whole invasion thing is just
like when northerners go south as snow birds. I’m pretty sure in the insect yellow pages
there’s an ad for our house: “Fabulous Place to Overwinter! Bring the kids! Heat, crumbs,
lots of windows and a guaranteed constant opening of doors for the dogs so you can come
and go at your leisure.”
The good news that Tawny reported is, and I know you’ll be relieved to read this as well,
“These insects do not cause structural damage to the home and are usually nothing more
than a nuisance.”
So there you go. When you wake up with them on your face in the middle of the night or
they appear in your food, when you walk the dogs with a funny little “rock” in your boot
only to find you’ve been pulverizing a stink bug for two miles, or when they’ve crawled out
of your roaring fireplace unscathed, when your dogs eat them, throw up, and eat them
again, what you are experiencing is not an infestation, but a nuisance.
And given the balance of this year, I think we can all live with a bit of a nuisance. Plus, here
as we mark a year of pandemic, we can take hope in the fact that Simisky confirms they are
fall and winter pests, and surely that means their time, like other overwintering insects
(and viruses?) is hopefully coming to an end.
For more information on ways you can learn a lot about the land, forests and bugs around you in cool and fun ways,
including programs, free webinars and an “Ask the Entomologist” section, visit:
https://ag.umass.edu/landscape.