Head
Strong | Swarm of home invaders is raising quite a stink
October
7, 2007
By
Michael Smerconish
Something stinks.
And it's not the 1-3 Eagles.
No, it's the Halyomorpha
halys that have got me down. They've
overrun my house in the burbs. Maybe yours, too. I find them lying in
windowsills. Closets. Doorways. And they seem particularly attracted to
crashing into my television screen. (I may be wrong, but I notice it usually
happens when the Phillies are on TV, with the top of their order at bat.)
These things are nasty.
Their common title of "brown marmorated stink bug" is a perfect name.
Man, they smell when you touch them. And, of course, you can't get rid of them
without touching them. If you've yet to get acquainted with stink bugs, know
that they're about an inch long, in the shape of a police badge, and come in
shades of brown. They're ugly. They're also fat, but they can fly.
As stink bugs spread, so do
rumors about their origin.
One guy told me they came
from the Lehigh Valley. Another said no, it was Reading. Somebody said Peco
brought them to the area so we'd have to close the windows and use
air-conditioning. Several blamed exterminators looking to jump-start their
economy, and one guy attributed our failure to stop them to Chinese insecticides
that break down in sunlight and are therefore useless. My favorite is an e-mail
suggesting they spread after a lab experiment failed in Lancaster. (Perhaps
Dutch Wonderland has gone Jurassic Park?)
Penn State's department of
entomology has a Web posting that comports with the more legitimate-sounding
theories I have been told. It says this stink bug is one not previously seen on
our continent, and it apparently was accidentally introduced into eastern
Pennsylvania. I don't quite understand what it means to be "accidentally
introduced." I think I heard Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta use similar terms
to refer to his burgeoning illegal population.
The bugs have now been seen
in South Jersey and 24 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties, including Philadelphia, Bucks,
Chester, Delaware and Montgomery. That's a long way from their native range in
China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Talk about a trade deficit - China gets U.S.
dollars, and we get lead toys and stink bugs.
The clearinghouse for all
things buggy in our area is the Insectarium, on Frankford Avenue in the Great
Northeast. The Insectarium is a tourist attraction that began when a Philly cop
turned pest-control man started to collect the bugs he was called upon to kill.
He'd put bugs in jars and leave them in his windows for curiosity seekers to
admire. Today the place is a full-fledged museum, and the Insectarium founder
is now retired and on a lounge chair in Florida.
Dave Steiger is now the
Insectarium general manager. He suggested that people "just let them go
about their life, and they won't bother you. They're not as bad in the city.
But they love the suburbs," he assured me.
I asked him about natural
predators. He said "the birds have yet to find out that they taste good,
so their numbers are getting higher and higher."
Given that Darwinian
evolution won't solve this problem anytime soon, with or without any notion of
intelligent design, I decided to call my exterminator, John Amendt. He calls
stink bugs a "fall invader." They feed on the natural vegetation in
your yard, and then come in your house through the cracks and crevices of your
walls and windows. He sprayed something that made them hide for a few days, but
now they're back. (Note to self: Investigate possible collusion between stink
bugs and exterminators.)
I tried sucking them up with
a DustBuster. Not only did the stink bugs soon return, but their friends left
my portable vacuum smelling like a ginko tree. Worse is the woman who had one
get stuck in her hair dryer, resulting in something akin to fried manure.
I can offer one solution
that works if you have patience. Take a Snapple bottle and fill it with an inch
or so of water. Then place the mouth of the bottle under the stink bugs and
kind of "scoop" them into the bottle. Often they'll just jump right
in - they seem to have an escape instinct that causes them to jump.
Which should save us, until
PETA takes up their cause.
Michael Smerconish's column appears on Thursdays in the
Daily News and on Sundays in Currents. Michael can be heard from 5:30 to 9 a.m.
weekdays on "The Big Talker," WPHT-AM (1210). Contact him via the Web
at http://www.mastalk.com